K. Phillips - "Dirty Wonder"

Take a listen to this extraordinarily cool new track, only on Roughstock!

We love exposing y'all to new music and that's why we're excited to introduce you to K. Phillips and the title track to his new album Dirty Wonder! The album is out March 10. Check out more from K. About the song and album below!

1) Please talk about the inspiration for this song -- what prompted you to write it? Is there a particular story behind it?

"Dirty Wonder," the song, is just pure writing. The song was initially called "I Wasn't Raised To Run." I loved the music but the lyrical hook reminded me too much of "Born To Run" every time I said it once it was recorded. So I scrapped the lyrics. I sat in my home studio and I decided to just ad-lib the lyric to see what would happen. I did two takes and the song and vocal were done. The brain is a process-making machine. I just had to be alone with it. It became the title track. I wish I could write more songs like this.

2) What was it like working on this song in the studio? How was the recording process?

We tracked the song as "I Wasn't Raised To Run" which had different lyrics, but, like I said, I scrubbed the lyrics and ad-libbed new lyrics in my home studio. I did two takes and just spit out lyrics. I said I would keep whatever came out and I did. Songwriting is often like jumping off a building and you're pretty sure there is a net but you don't know how far down.

3) I'm sure you had an idea in your head of what this song would sound like. How does the end result measure up to that idea in your mind?

I didn't think much of the song when I wrote it but I knew the players and Gordy Quist would make it into something special. It became the title track.

4) How do you think this song represents you as an artist, sonically speaking? What do you hope listeners take away from having listened to it?

I ad-lib lyrics to my songs in the live show. The writing of this song is an extension of that. I take years to finish songs for my albums but this song was written in the three minutes between the drummers' count off and the engineer's fade out. If I pause in the song, it's because I'm trying to figure out what to say next. I had no idea what the song was about once it was recorded. "Dirty Wonder" -- what's that? "I used to grow a beard to cover up the devil's face." What am I saying? This is what you do when you write. I'm not a rainmaker, I'm just a bucket. I hope it makes people come to the live show and I hope it inspires them to say "I can do that." Anyways, sorry to get so philosophical about a lewd rock and roll song. Maybe it's art or maybe I'm just lazy.

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