Glen Phillips
Best known as the frontman and primary songwriter for alt rock band Toad the Wet Sprocket, Glen Phillips has also forged an extensive solo career full of eclectic collaborations and side projects. In the early '90s, Toad broke into the mainstream with a thoughtful, folk-driven sound that yielded jangling hits like "All I Want" and "Walk on the Ocean." Following the group's initial breakup at the end of the decade, Phillips applied his warm baritone and introspective lyrics to a series of solo albums including 2001's Abulum and 2005's Winter Pays for Summer. He also collaborated with a member of Nickel Creek as Mutual Admiration Society and was part of the 2009 supergroup Works Progress Administration. By the 2010s, a reunited Toad the Wet Sprocket had issued a comeback album, even as Phillips forged ahead with tightly crafted albums of his own including 2016's Swallowed by the New and 2022's There Is So Much Here.
Phillips formed Toad the Wet Sprocket in 1986, when he was only 15 years old. Originally self-released, the band's debut effort, Bread and Circus, earned them a contract with Columbia Records which reissued it in 1989. However, it was the group's third album -- the more elaborate Fear -- that truly broke the group, garnering heavy radio play with the singles "All I Want" and "Walk on the Ocean." After three years away from the recording studio, Toad returned to the mainstream with Dulcinea, which again found one of its singles, "Fall Down," in heavy radio rotation. After six albums and a substantial string of hits, the group disbanded in 1998.
Phillips immediately began touring as a solo act and worked with producer Ethan Johns to create his solo debut, 2001's Abulum. During this time he also befriended the members of bluegrass band Nickel Creek, with whom he recorded a collaborative project called Mutual Admiration Society. Following the 2003 solo concert album Live at Largo, Sugar Hill Records issued Mutual Admiration Society's lone self-titled LP in 2004 after which Phillips signed with Lost Highway for his solo follow-up, Winter Pays for Summer. Released in 2005, the album featured guest appearances from an array of alt-pop luminaries like Ben Folds, Jon Brion, Dan Wilson, and ex-Jellyfish frontman Andy Sturmer. The label deal was short-lived however and within a year Phillips was once again independent. An EP of outtakes, Unlucky 7, appeared in 2006, followed by his third solo album, Mr. Lemons. During the front half of the 2000s, Toad the Wet Sprocket reconvened a handful of times, but in the summer of 2006, they mounted a more substantial reunion in the form of a lengthy American tour. Despite Toad's renewed activity, Phillips continued releasing solo music including the 2008 EP Secrets of the New Explorers and forming a supergroup with members of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Nickel Creek, and Elvis Costello & the Imposters called Works Progress Administration, which released its eponymous album in 2009. He also formed the one-off band Plover with Neilson Hubbard and Garrison Starr.
Over the next few years, Toad the Wet Sprocket continued to tour occasionally and in 2013 released New Constellation, their sixth album and first since 1997's Coil. Prior to this, Phillips issued a pair of outtakes and rarities albums from earlier in his career. 2016's Swallowed by the New marked his proper return to solo music. Written and recorded following his divorce, the album explored themes of grief and loss and was reissued in 2018 by the Compass label.
Phillips remained active heading into the next decade with Toad the Wet Sprocket's seventh album, 2021's Starting Now, followed a year later by the solo LP There Is So Much Here.