K Phillips takes us into the Delta, keeps us in the bounty of Texas and then we get right on into Motown, where things bump and grind in his own strange way. His songs come from the point of view of a man who's been around, who's met all kinds of people, who's tried successfully and unsuccessfully to charm all kinds of girls. He likes the ones who bite and buck. He doesn't mind the ones who do whatever's on their minds, whatever's in their pants. These are the women who laugh a lot and who he suggests might masturbate with dynamite if it was around. They are adventurous. They are the women that the rambling men in the song "Rambler," seek out in every new city that they come to. It's a way to stave off boredom, but if getting laid is the one thing that the traveler has on his mind then it goes quite a bit deeper than that.
Phillips, who lives in Austin, Texas, can do sensitive and lonesome traveler as well. He's versatile in his observations about the man who lets himself get to that bleary-eyed state that makes him feel like he's losing his sanity, that he's losing everything that's important to him. He's the kind of guy who's looking up at the moon, whispering his prayers before he beds down somewhere that's just as lonely as the place he bedded down the night before and the night before that.
His solemn songs, such as "Lincoln City (Keep It Safe)," from his latest full-length, "American Girls," might be his bread and butter, detailing a man with a faded soul, looking at wilted photographs to hang onto something that he used to have. He's a sick player and a skilled, cool vocalist, able to mix everything up into whatever emotion is most needed for the mood, for the frame of mind that the men are in during the nights when they've stripped themselves back to be brutally honest or covered themselves up to feel that splash of what they might be able to find out there in those dark nights that they've rolled into.