Phillip LaRue

Phillip LaRue is all grown up. As teenagers earlier this decade, Phillip, along with sister Natalie, formed the sibling duo LaRue and released three full-lengths on Reunion Records. It provided a learning experience that ultimately left Phillip disenfranchised and wondering how to artistically engage the music world as an authentic Christian. He’s found his answer in a new label deal with BEC Recordings – a place that handed Phillip a musical blank check to write the songs he wanted to write and speak his mind no matter the subject matter.

The result is the upcoming Let The Road Pave Itself, a stunning collection of a growing songwriter seeking both the artistic and accessible sides of music. Senior Editor Matt Conner sat down with Phillip in Nashville for a conversation on the ups and downs of an industry that holds promise, needs change and could ultimately learn a thing or two from one of its most promising voices.

Soul-Audio: It’s been quite a stretch in the industry with LaRue and then now on your own and dabbling in other things? So I’m curious at this point in your career what sort of vision you enter into the studio with?

Phillip LaRue: Well, back in the day there was a lot of limitations and boundaries and walls around what we were allowed to do. To be honest, I wasn’t planning on doing this again – maybe on an independent level for fun, but I wasn’t planning on touring again and all the artist thing.

SA: Really? Do you remember the moment you wanted to return?

Phillip: I was in a serious accident a couple years ago and I lost the use of my right arm for a couple months and I didn’t know if I was going to get my feeling back. So when that came back, I sat down at the piano and began to write and the songs began to come out of my heart. Thematically, they moved me more than anything I’d ever written before. So the bulk of this new record, I wrote after that season. My passion for music and my passion for playing and writing and everything came tenfold after that. So that’s when I began to wonder if I should do this again.

And really it was my friends and family that said I should. I was okay with leaving it on my hard drive and emailing my friends to tell them I wrote a song. My manager/publisher – because I write for a publisher as well – told me that I should do another record because the songs were neat. I began to pray about it with my wife and then the whole thing came up wondering who to partner with and how to record the songs. It was then I was blessed by Tyson, who runs BEC. He was a big fan of the songs and they said they’d give me the budget and for me to just go be myself. I was humbled by their belief in me and that gave me the extra incentive to do this – to have a company that is standing behind you.

On a musical level, with LaRue we would play live and you would hear one thing and then you’d listen to the record and you’d hear another. In the last three or four years, that’s the case most of the time. On a recording level, things become so easy to transform things whether it’s Autotune or Beat Detective or all these things. I have a studio and I have those programs on my computer and I’m not saying they are bad. But I think they’re overused and overdone in music today. I really began to listen to my favorite records during this time – Counting Crows, Bob Dylan and Wallflowers and Neil Finn and Crowded House. The common thread that I realized is that they tracked in a live setting with a live band to tape. Genre-wise, there are a lot of different themes, but that seems to be the common theme there – besides them all being geniuses. [Laughs]

So I’m not comparing myself to those artists – far from it – but I will say that I was inspired by them to track the record live to tape and hopefully capture something that can remind the consumer that they’re listening to a heartbeat rather than a pretty voice that’s hitting every note exactly like it should.

SA: I want to go back because you said you didn’t want to get into this again and I’m wondering about the reasons a person has for saying that.

Phillip: I saw things I didn’t want to see. I saw the underbelly of stuff. I was disillusioned by it. So I knew that if I was going to come back, it had to be more on my terms. Now, I hate when an artist says they need control, because I don’t feel that I’m controlling. But if I was going to come back, they had to be okay with my brokenness, my crap, the beauty. I think because of what I had in the past, there was a sense of trying to pretend and to come across a certain way. What got me excited about being in the artist world again was the label saying to just be myself. So that’s been refreshing to be me and to discuss the pain and the beauty of this journey called faith.

Thematically on the record, I didn’t think a Christian label would sign me because I am singing about everything – love songs, songs about death, songs about life, songs about pain, songs about God. It’s a little left-of-center, I think. It’s very straightforward. It’s not atmospheric at all where you’re wondering what I am singing about. You know what I am talking about through each song. But it crosses a landscape of emotions and I didn’t think I would find a label to let me do that.

SA: Derek Webb talks about writing songs about the other 98% of life outside of Bible studies or most other things Christian music is about. And to be able to write those songs, he just circumvents the system and does his own thing, as does several other artists. But you just quit altogether. So I’m wondering why didn’t you just do your own thing versus take the artistic ball and bat, so to speak, and go home.

Phillip: I was burnt out, too. I was playing 200 shows a year for five years and I knew when I got married that I was not going to put my wife through that. At the time, I had a couple buddies going through divorce that I looked up to within the industry. I saw where their marriages went and it scared me half to death. It’s funny because I walked away from the artist thing but I still asked how I could change the industry. I started coming up with compilations and collections and I actually pitched a compilation in town and it ended up happening called Message: Psalms Project. It had Matt Wertz and Dave Barnes and Over the Rhine and others. I produced that with Monroe Jones.

So on an artist level I disengaged, but I was still trying to make an impact and talk about that 98%. But the label folded two weeks after the record released, so nobody heard that record. It never got the time of day from anybody. I think that was another strong blow to me. I think, ‘Well, that sucks. Now what?’ But what is weird in stepping back in is that I honestly feel I made an independent record. If I didn’t feel that, I wouldn’t be sitting down here with you today. I wanted to produce the record. I wanted to work with certain individuals. I didn’t have an agenda, but I knew I didn’t want to compromise on an artistic level or lyrical level. I’d rather just stay home and write a song and record it to Garageband on my laptop.

So that’s what gave me the excitement to step back in. I was given no boxes. And it was awesome. So it’s fun. This record is my heart and I think that’s what is exciting about it. It actually happened. Labels will say that to you. They’ll come to you and say they just want you to be yourself. Then halfway through the project, you’re disenchanted by the events or you see the ones writing the checks and you feel obligated to shake hands and play nice. With Tooth & Nail, it was the most incredible experience for me. They told me to pick the songs and pick where to record. Halfway through, I had to pinch myself and ask, ‘Is this really happening? Am I getting away with this? Sweet!’

SA: That has to be scary to turn that record in, I would think, because before you had someone to blame if the album wasn’t well-liked. But now you had total control, so it’s all your fault either way.

Phillip: Yeah, the pressure is on you. I have no one to blame. There’s no scapegoat. In the past you could say, ‘Yeah I loved that song, but the producer took it down a different route.’ But now I’m the producer so there’s no one else.

SA: Is this a scarier album to release?

Phillip: Yeah, because of that and also because it’s so close to my heart. If someone doesn’t like it, then they don’t like me and where I’m at. But then again, that’s music. That’s art. People will like it and others will hate it. I could paint a canvas right now and some in this room would love it and the others say, ‘I don’t get it.’ Art is art and you can’t really think about that too much. You just have to be yourself. So I feel like that’s what I’ve been able to do. That gets me excited.

SA: You listen to a song like “Chasing Daylight” and it seems like you’re developing new analogies in an industry of oft-recycled metaphors to describe the timeless truths of the gospel. Is that something you’re actively after?

Phillip: Yeah, here’s what I wanted. I really wanted to write a record that could edify and encourage people and yet could be something that I could play in a club downtown and could translate the same way. That’s a difficult place to walk. You have to be clear cut about what you’re singing about and yet you can’t be offensive. I have a burden and passion for folks that would never walk into a church. So I feel so excited because I’m playing a Calvary Chapel show soon and then playing a club in downtown Los Angeles the next day. It’s great to not have to over-think what I’m playing because I am fully myself in both shows. I don’t run away from my faith and I don’t try to act too cool or hip and have my hair over my eyes. I can just be myself.

I touched on Neil Finn earlier and that’s because he has this great balance. He sings about real life but there’s also a point in the song where you roll the window down and just sing along. Now, that’s really hard to do as a songwriter – to be artistic and yet accessible. There’s either two worlds: you’re either accessible or artistic. To have your foot in both is so hard. Bands like Counting Crows are good at getting those feel good moments and yet also write a great lyric that a music lover can grab onto. So this is my first attempt at doing that – being accessible and yet sing about what stirs me at the same time. I hope people hear that. I guess we’ll find out.

• www.philliplarue.com
• www.myspace.com/philliplarue

↓ 2 comments

#1 Stuart Lowe on May 5th, 2009 at 6:05 pm

Great interview matt, just found out about this artist from this very article. ‘Found’ is one wonderful song.

Very warm and has such a great effect on me.

#2 John Wofford on May 6th, 2009 at 9:39 pm

He’s a great artist, and an awesome dude with character too.

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