State of Grace

"What I want to do," Phillips says, "is make friends. That's what I find in an audience, that's what I find at Swallow Hill and all over the country. I need friends. I don't need money. I don't need power. I don't need fame." (Phillips has been receiving some monetary help from his friends, who contribute via www.utahphillips.net to the Utah Phillips Grassroots Social Security Fund, set up by a few of his fans and benefactors.)

Phillips, apparently, also doesn't need a boss -- as evidenced by the sentiment of one of his trademark tunes, "Dump the Bosses." An Industrial Workers of the World song penned in 1912, it has been a staple of Phillips's shows for decades. (An updated version of it appears on Fellow Workers.) The questions raised in the song seem pretty timely today: "Are you cold, forlorn and hungry?/Are there lots of things you lack?/Is your life made up of misery?/Then dump the bosses off your back."

That's why the singer is a tramp: U. Utah Phillips has got to keep on moving.

Details

With Al and Emily Cantrell
8 p.m. Friday, January 12, $15-$17
303-777-1003

Swallow Hill, Daniels Hall, 71 East Yale Avenue

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• Folk Music
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Considering such a move? Phillips has firsthand advice on how and why one should carry out the mission. "Everybody has a unique and specific virtue in what they can do," he says. "And happiness is in living the exercise of that virtue. But you've got to hold the line, 'This is who I am.' So the first thing you do is figure out what you want to do. Then, while working for that boss, you gather the necessary tools and knowledge you need to exercise your plan. Then one day you're going to pick up the phone and call in well. And you'll say, 'I now own what I do.'" The move will involve struggles for finance and stability and pressure from the expectations of others, Phillips warns. But the payoff is independence and the chance to make "voluntary combinations" with like-minded, liberated souls who can help foster the dream. "You feel great," Phillips says of the freed laborer. "You find that you're not alone, you're not isolated. That's what I found in the folk music world. It's a constant struggle," he adds. "But looking back down the long tunnel now, I say, 'God, it was worth it.'"