He could have hidden from the tasks before him in reestablishing his life, but instead, he chose to stare his demons in the eye and publicly take them on, letting folks know what happened and singing as many songs as he felt like and maybe back me up on one of our duo numbers if he had the energy. I sang songs with him at his place and drove him around to as many of the local open mics as I could manage to, so that he could sing what he could manage, see his friends and swap stories with them to keep his memory going.

He had come a long way since our friend Sara Hensler had taken him to the VA hospital in great mental and physical disarray. He was still having troubles reading, completing sentences, making phone calls or anything else that involved pressing buttons, remembering lyrics and other things, but he'd come quite a ways. It came and went.Phil was up 'til 3am jamming and talking each night. He could talk lucidly about philosophy one minute and lose track of objects or time the next.

He'd turned off his phone when he got home on Monday and didn't answer calls I made about whether he wanted to come to the Post-Getaway sing that night at Zed's Cafe, so I'd just figured he wanted to sleep things off.

The next morning, his alarm went off and kept going, and his landlord went up to check, only to find he'd passed away in his sleep, and after the landlord had called the ambulance, he called me. The news hit me like a sledgehammer blow to the gut.
We'd been good friends off and on for over forty years and had shared many adventures, songs and friendship, and at times we performed as a duo that he'd christened The Barnyard Prophets. He taught me to sing with accompaniment. He was currently without an automobile, and I helped ferry him around a lot.

I'm still taking it all in. He was like a brother to me, arguments and all, and there's going to be a big hole in my life.......