Several years ago, Grant-Lee Phillips was wandering the elegant halls of the Norton Simon Art Museum in Pasadena, California. Amid a collection of highly detailed paintings from India, some dating back to the 1800s, one particular work caught his eye. The accomplished singer, songwriter, and painter opened up his notebook and made a note of both the imagery of the painting and the ominous implications of its title. This notebook entry would one day come to inspire the title of Phillips’ 12th solo album, the self-produced In the Hour of Dust.

“A common theme throughout the poetry and the paintings of India,” Phillips explains, “is this concept of ‘the hour of cow dust.’ It’s that moment of the day when the cows are led back home, they kick up the dust; that's a cue to prepare the lamps. Night is about to fall.”

While Phillips first made his name as the singer, guitarist, and songwriter behind Grant Lee Buffalo's distinctive blend of folk-rock, alternative, and Americana, he confesses that his first creative steps were in the visual arts.

“Art was my first love,” says Phillips. “When I left Stockton, California and moved to L.A., I enrolled in film school. I thought, well, I love art, I love music, I love performing, perhaps there's a balance, making weird films.”

That all changed, he says, arriving in L.A. in the early ‘80s, “just as the underground music scene was rumbling, building towards the explosion of the ‘90s.”

From then on everything went into music - writing, recording, and performing.

“Although art and film had become eclipsed by music, I found that putting out albums provided me with an opportunity to create accompanying visuals. I’ve always embraced the intersection of music and album art, much like the painting you see on the cover of this album. Painting quiets, or directs my mind towards a focal point, and everything else goes away.”

Yet, far from replacing the urge to make music, Phillips has found that painting and songwriting complement each other in many ways.

“As a lyricist, I tend to be a visual person too,” says Phillips. “I’m painting scenery with words, setting the stage, capturing a mood.”

Indeed, the entirety of Grant-Lee Phillips’ songbook, from the albums of Grant Lee Buffalo, throughout his 12 solo albums, are highly cinematic and atmospheric.

“The mood on this album is contemplative,” says Phillips, “trying to find meaning in an age of confusion, feeling your way through the blinding dust of unreality.”

Phillips notes that while the opener Little Men is a kind of spiritual tune, based in his firm belief in humanity, he likewise laments that American freedoms “are still not guaranteed to all,” despite the stories we tell ourselves.

“Closer Tonight reflects my uneasy feelings about this moment. We’re closer than ever to realizing our greatest potential, yet closer than ever to self-destruction.”
 
While Phillips doesn’t shy away from the big themes of contemporary life, In the Hour of Dust is also a highly intimate affair; both in its musical presentation and the highly personal – often autobiographical – lyrics in the songs, all set, the songwriter admits, “against this larger discordant backdrop.”

Bullies is an outsider song, based on Phillips’ own experiences growing up. “Sometimes it feels like the bullies never really stop being bullies. They go into jobs that reward them for being little sociopaths. They go into business. They go into government. This is a song for the rest of us who are more than tired of the bullies.” Written by Grant-Lee Phillips and pianist Jamie Edwards, Bullies is the first co-write to be featured on any of his albums.

On the home front, a few of the songs on In the Hour of Dust are deeply personal odes to his longtime partner and the mutual respect that allows them to be individuals within their union. While it’s written in the third person, Phillips confesses that “She Knows Me,” is one of the most personal songs he has ever written.

“It’s an acknowledgement,” says Phillips, “of the fears and insecurities that come knocking in the late hours, and being thankful that there’s someone who knows me, better than I do myself at times.

Someone, speaks to Phillip’s complicated relationship with solitude. “This is a lonely timeline. Not romantically, but in a basic human way. There’s a hole that cannot be filled with social media.”

Another personal song, Did You Make It Through the Night Okay reflects Phillips’ indigenous heritage as an Enrolled citizen of the Muskogee (Creek) Nation.

“There are no words for ‘good morning’ in the Muskogee (Creek) language. There is a saying however, ‘Estonkon cukhayvtikv,’ which roughly translates to ‘Did you make it through the night okay?’ I was taken with the wry hyperbole and dark humor in this greeting. It’s reflective of those who have experienced hardship and look upon each day as a new blessing. It hit me as the perfect way to greet the morning, especially these days.”

Phillips began laying the foundation for many of the songs in his home studio in early 2024, tracking vocals and guitars for the album’s more whispered moments, including Closer Tonight, Stories We Tell, She Knows Me, Someone, and No Mistaking. These songs would be fleshed out in November of the year at Lucy's Meat Market in Eagle Rock, California. Phillips would enlist engineer Pete Min, who had previously recorded and mixed Phillips’ 2020 album Lightning, Show Us Your Stuff at the same studio.

“There was an intimacy to those home recordings that I wanted to preserve,” says Phillips, “but I felt they could be enhanced by inviting some of my friends in.”

The addition of L.A. session ace Patrick Warren on keyboards, plus the husband and wife rhythm section of Jay Bellerose on drums, and Jennifer Condos on bass, brought these unguarded home recordings into focus. For the rest of the album, Phillips and the band started from scratch, playing together live on the floor.

“I've lost track of how many albums I've made with Jay at this point, and this is probably my third with Jennifer,” Phillips explains. “Jay and Jennifer have such wonderful chemistry between the two of them, and they're both such supportive, beautiful people. And Patrick Warren is someone I’ve also known for ages. He came in and played the piano and pulled off these incredibly symphonic keyboard parts.”

Returning to Nashville after the recordings, Phillips began listening back.

“No Mistaking was one of the songs I had originally tracked at home. When I took the song out to L.A., it evolved. I decided to recut my voice and guitars to match that energy. Brendan Benson was one of the people I met when I first moved to Nashville. I reached out to Brendan, a phenomenal artist in his own right, and he recorded my vocal and guitar parts on that one.”

Like many of us, Phillips is constantly fighting to keep his head above the noise of the news and the everyday anxiety of modern life. Writing songs is his way of pushing back against the hazy twilight, and lighting the lamps in order to lead himself, and anyone else listening, out of the darkness.

Phillips reflects, “We can focus on all of the various freedoms that are being threatened, things that maybe a year or two ago, we might've taken for granted. But at a certain point in time, it comes back down to very human primal things. I don't see songs of love and songs of protest as being so far apart, really. It’s all about recognizing the value of connection in a disconnected time.”