If you've been in the Valley a year or two, you probably know Philip Price from his band Winterpills, who play a particularly introspective kind of music they dub "chamber-indie." If you've been here a good while, you may know him as a solo performer and songwriter or as the front man for rock-pop band The Maggies—through many an incarnation, Price has made music in the Valley for a long time.
The Winterpills—Price, Flora Reed, Dennis Crommett, Dave Hower and Brian Akey—have been praised mightily in local and national press, landed a tune on Grey's Anatonomy (and other shows), and played some big places, like radio show Mountain Stage.
This Friday, you can catch the reunited Maggies at the Iron Horse, and April 25, you can see Winterpills at Memorial Hall in Shelburne Falls.
Advocate: Television shows seem to be helping a lot of musicians get exposure. How was it to see your song on Grey's Anatomy?
Price: It was weird. It was the first song you hear, in the prologue. If you were a Grey's Anatomy fan you probably caught it, but if you were a casual viewer, you might not have caught it. There's been some nice trickle-down from that. We hope to get more of those. There have been others, too. We had two songs on Eli Stone, and we had a song on Lipstick Jungle.
What do you think makes a song right for the Winterpills rather than the Maggies or solo?
I wish I knew. It's more like I think the songs I'm writing now just fit the band more. After the Maggies, I did two solo records, and I was trying to mine a quieter, more subtle realm. I think the Winterpills sound came out of that. I wasn't shouting when I was singing—I could actually go right up to the mic and almost talk. That's where it came from more. I haven't changed how I write consciously—I just ended up here.
But now we're actually rocking more. This last tour was playing a lot of rock clubs. At the last minute, you can get booked at a rock club with four other bands, but you're facing crowds that won't necessarily hear the subtler sounds. It's affected how the songs are being recorded.
How do you tend to write songs?
I've been having a little writing flurry lately. They almost start off as really annoying loops of a riff that I can't get out of my head. It's almost a little pychotic. I have to write it to get it out of my head. I finish the song, and then I can move on.
Maybe I should write commercial jingles, because a lot of these melodies are so short. I have to expand them sometimes to get them into full songs.
Getting the songs right means getting the lyrics right. I know it when I hear it. [It's right] if it doesn't sound forced, if it actually means something and isn't just cleverly put-together words. But I think there's a difference between poetry and lyrics—I think of songs as guided poetry. The music guides you into an emotional attachment to the words you might not have on the page. A line that sits on the page weirdly might work great in a song.
I know it when I hear it, and I often don't hear it. It's a struggle to get to that spot.
Your music often harks back to '60s sounds. Do you find that fertile musical territory?
I'm a fan of music and I get inspired by hearing what other people are doing all the time. It directly feeds into my desire to create. … I usually listen to other music and I hear melodies. I've partly joked about hearing a song, and then I want to go home and write that exact song. Not a song like it, but that exact song. So I'll use the same progresssion or melody and then it morphs into something entirely different that doesn't sound anything like the original.
It probably starts for me a lot of times with the Beatles. I didn't want to be a Beatle—I wanted to be all of them! When I was five, I saw a streetcleaning machine. I told my mother I want to be a streetcleaner. She said, "You mean the man who drives the machine?" I said, "No, I mean the actual machine!" I want to become these other actual things.
What's driven you to continue through all these different projects?
I don't know, I guess I'm just stuck in a rut. No, I still like doing it. It's partly the desire to really follow through the whole thing of being a songwriter and trying to evolve. There's been times when I felt like the business end of it was about to kill me. I never thought, "I'm going to quit writing." I'll always write songs. … It keeps going well enough just to keep me in.
I'm not ungrateful—it's just that it's a crazy business. There's a million little glass ceilings. You get into one realm, and then there's always more to do, another step to go. Which doesn't really jive with being creative—it isn't vertical, and the business is. You're stuck in this math equation that I can never really figure out. Why do I have to be vertical? Everyone has to be vertical.
The Maggies play with The Novels April 17, $8/advance, $10/door, 10 p.m., The Iron Horse, 20 Center St., Northampton, (413) 586-8686.
Winterpills play a benefit for The Academy at Charlemont with openers The Freightshakers April 25, 7:30 p.m., Memorial Hall, 51 Bridge Street, Shelburne Falls, $10/students and seniors, $15/ general, www.charlemont.org or (413) 339-4912.
