Phil came to Chicago to do a benefit for Sing Out! magazine at a great club called The Quiet Knight owned by Richard Harding. Jim Glover (of Jim And Jean) was Phil's college roomy. He came to the benefit joined Phil on stage for a few songs. I still have a bad slide I took of the two of them on stage. Malvina Reynolds was on that bill too. Ola Belle Reed also. Me too.
I saw Phil again later that week in Old Town somewhere and I asked him if he'd mind if I used a title of one of his songs, "Links On The Chain", as the title for my column I'd begun writing monthly in COME FOR TO SING MAGAZINE out of Chicago. Phil gratiously said, "Thanks for asking. Sure."---------- I do wish I'd liked him more doing his own songs. Truth is, whenever I saw Phil he was, more or less, using Bob Gibson's mannerisms and trying to do Bob's guitar style I thought. His "jerkiness" was an exageration and a parody of a style that was endearing and effective when Gibson did it.------ But Jim and Jean's verve Records LP had the best versions of "Flower Lady", "Crucifixion", "Changes" and some others. These days, Terry Leonino and Greg Artzner really do a bang-up job on many of his tunes, but their version of "When I'm Gone" is just beautiful and spellbinding.

(In the first issue of COME FOR TO SING I had called my column THE LAVENDER COWBOY. I was making fun, I thought, of myself for being a city kid who sang macho Western, hobo, and North Woods lumberjack songs. But then I had second thoughts-------and changed the title.)

Art Thieme