Robbie Phillips: "expert" -- bass diddley-bo, jaw, harp, harmonica

"Washtub" Robbie Phillips' blues and folk credentials are too long to list here. He has been a regular sideman for "Spider" John Koerner, Paul Geremia, and the late Howard Armstrong, as well as countless others. (My connection to him was through slide guitarist Kenny Holladay, with whom I played in the Big Mess Band in the early 90s, and writer/guitarist Elijah Wald, who sent him my way after Katrina.) Robbie grew up in New Bedford, Mass, and worked for many years as a commercial fisherman. He always listened to and played music, and worked as a roadie for bands as a teenager. He quit fishing and moved to Cambridge in the mid-1980s to play in Harvard Square with Kenny.

Robbie currently plays a lot of bass with me, both as an acoustic duo and with our band "The Bright Moments ." (He also plays excellent harmonica, jaw harp, ukulele and guitar.) These days Robbie generally plays bass on one- and two-string electric bass "diddley bows" of his own design. He is well known for his earlier invention, the "Wombat" bass (or "art bass," as Dave Matthews called it), a one-string upright built out of a tall drum with a wooden, fixed neck. He has been building instruments for years, and runs the Pinewood Guitar Co, which specializes in these types of odd stringed instruments. Most of these are cut out of one piece of solid wood. (I play a four-string fretless made of yellow pine, with a Teisco pickup that really burns!) Some of his instruments are built with car parts for pickups.

 

For info about Pinewood instruments,
contact Robbie at barbucate@earthlink.net or 617-876-2148.