'Gilmore Girls' Town Troubadour Grant-Lee Phillips On Nashville And Stars Hollow, Of Course

Grant-Lee Phillips was the songwriter behind Grant Lee Buffalo, the US trio whose four beloved '90s LPs showcased his sublime voice and storyteller's lyrics. He's since put out eight solo albums, including 2016's The Narrows. But, given Phillips also played the town troubadour in 19 Gilmore Girls episodes, the number one question to ask is: is he in the new episodes? "I'm happy to say I got that call," says Phillips, 53, from his home in Nashville. "It's a wrap. We shot four more episodes this year, and these will debut in November on Netflix. It's called A Year In The Life Of The Gilmore Girls."

Phillips was always proud of his involvement in the show — he calls it "quietly daring", and offers "it always felt like such an idiosyncratic show to be on mainstream television"- and was especially gladdened when Gilmore Girls fans discovered his own music. "Once, I turned up to a soundcheck in Hamburg," Phillips says. "And there was a girl with a load of DVDs for me to sign. Then she and her mother appeared at the show. Without that shared experience of watching Gilmore Girls together, they would never have heard my music, have ended up, together, at my show. I love that."

"I'm happy to say I got that call, it's a wrap."

The new Gilmore Girls eps aren't Phillips' first reunion experience. In 2011, Grant Lee Buffalo reunited for a run of shows, their first since their 1999 break-up. "All of us had harboured that curiosity in our minds about what it would be like to revisit that music and one another," he says. "In some ways [we] went back to the raw energy of being a trio in its earliest form. It was really visceral and hugely rewarding. Everybody had had some years away to, when we came back together, really appreciate it, more so than we ever did before."

Phillips' career rise wasn't meteoric: he started playing in bands after moving to Los Angeles to study film at 19; and "the story of [his] 20s" was tarring roofs by day, playing shows at night. His first band, Shiva Burlesque, gathered a local following but never went further. By the time Grant Lee Buffalo went on their first overseas tour, in advance of their debut LP, 1993's Fuzzy, he was already 30. GLB would tour endlessly and never found happiness in it: "You enter into some other world together, and you emerge as intensified versions of yourself. Sometimes, you don't recognise each other when you come out of it. It's not an easy thing, it really pushes you to breaking."

Phillips' solo career has proceeded at a more relaxed pace, but it's picked up again with the response to The Narrows, a "full-blooded electric Americana record" inspired by his move to Nashville three years ago. "I had done some other records that were a bit more under-the-radar: they were self-released, or acoustic, or they didn't get the push they deserved," Phillips says. "There's something about this one where all the elements came together. The response has been great."