Peter Cooper On Music: Fortune eludes Phil Lee, but fun he has

Phil Lee

Phil Lee on Phil Lee:

“I love Phil Lee. He’s this creature I’ve created who does what he likes and likes what he does.”

Other folks like what he does, as well. Not millions of other folks. Perhaps, though, an acceptable amount.

“I’m not as famous as I ought to be, but (wife) Maggie says I’m famous enough,” he says. “Maggie’s always right.”

Phil Lee — his last name is actually Pearson, but that doesn’t sound right — travels the world with a couple of guitars and sings, mostly truthfully, “Phil Lee don’t have to work/ He gets paid for having fun.”

He makes albums, the latest of which is the brand-new “The Fall and Further Decline of the Mighty King of Love,” and those albums are readily ignored by mainstream radio programmers but happily consumed by the pockets of fans who make it possible for him to travel the world with a couple of guitars.

Phil Lee is 61, and he’s brash and literate and full of one-liners. He’s like the love child of Bob Dylan and Joan Rivers. He’s offensive to the easily offended, though he has a sparkle about him that tends to win people over when he pauses between songs to ask an audience member, “You ever make love to a little bitty old man,” and then to assure, “I’m told it’s fantastic.”

‘I’m on their side’

I played a Bluebird Cafe in-the-round with Phil once, when he asked that question to the perhaps-21-year-old daughter of another performer. Turns out she had not ever made love to a little bitty old man, and had no such plans. But she still laughed with Phil, which was kind of the point.

They also laughed with him during another Bluebird round in which Emmylou Harris was sitting in, singing harmonies. There were only four chairs for performers, all occupied, and Harris needed one. You’ve got to have a seat in order to sit in. That’s kind of a rule. Lee suggested, into the microphone, “Why don’t you come over here and sit on Grampee Lee’s knee?”

Harris declined. And when another performer informed the crowd that you never know what might happen at the Bluebird, from hit songs to the borderline harassment of an icon like Emmylou Harris, Phil said, “That was Emmylou Harris? Somebody needs to fill ol’ Grampee Lee in on things like that.”

“I’m not running for office, but I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings,” he says. “When I’m coming at people, I want them to know I’m on their side, that we’re in it together. You’ve got to win ’em, make ’em love you. They’re thinking, ‘Who in the hell is this? A leprechaun in a suit?’ ”

‘I’ve got to be me’

Well, yes, kind of. A leprechaun — “I’m small but I’m scrappy,” is his assessment — with a suit and a bunch of one-liners and, as it turns out, a remarkable collection of songs. He moved to Nashville in 1995 with the erroneous notion that some big hit country stars might record big hit country versions of some of those songs. He even convinced publisher Big Yellow Dog that this scenario might occur.

“I failed miserably,” he says. “I did write a bunch of my better songs there, though. I wrote ‘You Should Have Known Me Then,’ which has that line about ‘I’d have slit your throat for a (not nice word) dime.’ That may have been when the publishers realized, ‘Uh, this guy’s just not getting it.’ ”

The Music Row experience didn’t make Phil Lee a star or a hit writer, but neither did it make him bitter about the music industry.

“I hear some people talking about, ‘Oh my God, what Nashville has done to country music,’ ” he says. “I don’t have that animosity. I can’t hold Taylor Swift accountable for what’s holding me back.”

Not much seems to be holding him back, really. “The Fall and Further Decline ...” album is stacked with master musicians including Dave Roe, Jen Gunderman and Ken Coomer, engineer George Bradfute and producer Richard Bennett. And the songs are quintessential, atypical, occasionally profane marvels.

“You want to make your mother proud, and you want to make your wife a bunch of money, but I’ve got to be me,” he says. “After 50 years of ‘Ma, I’ve gotta be me,’ you don’t alter your course. And maybe after awhile, you get sort of respectable. And my mother says she couldn’t be any prouder than she is.”

Lately, Phil has been making noise about moving off to California, but it’s hard to say when or how that might happen. After all, this is a guy who claims to be on a never-ending “I saw him before he died” tour. But he has ideas...

“Maybe I’ll open up a little weenie cart,” he says. “My dad had a hot dog stand, so that’s kind of in my blood. Also, there’s the rickshaw business. In California, they might go for this: The Fitness Rickshaw. I’d sit in the back and play songs while people pulled me to wherever they were going.”

Even that, though, sounds too much like work. Phil Lee don’t have to work. He gets paid for having fun.