VANCE PHILLIPS
OUTLAW COUNTRY ARTIST
BIOGRAPHY

Vance Phillips comes from the simple country township of Pink in Pottawatomie County, OK, where he was raised listening to the legends of country music. Vance's family has a rich musical background. Vance's earliest musical influence was his grandfather, who plays a variety of country and bluegrass instruments. Vance honed his guitar skills playing on his grandfather's vintage instruments and amplifier.

Vance got his own electric guitar at age 13, and immediately started playing along with every song he heard on the radio. Throughout his teenage years, Vance played in a diverse lineup of local garage bands, mostly punk rock and heavy metal, with an unmistakable southern sound. He also performed in his schools' musical and drama organizations," ...with the rest of the stoners."

Vance Phillips After high school, Vance was rejected by the military because of a tarnished juvenile criminal record so he drifted from band to band in search of musicians and songwriters who had the pure sound and style that burned in his own mind and soul. It found him in his hometown. It was Outlaw Country. The absolute reality of the music fed his spirit like a needle feeds a junkie. With harmonica in hand, he walked miles of train track daily to experience the music that filled his emptiness and satisfied his demons.

Feeling driven by something larger than himself, and wanting to take his music to another level, Vance, like so many others before him, struck out for Nashville. Though his visits to the music city were short, the people he met and the experience he gained showed Vance that he was," ...on the right road, but in the wrong town."

When he got back home, Vance recruited a rhythm section whom he took, in 2002, to the House of Blues in Memphis to record his first demo titled "Pott. County Outlaw". Beloved locally, the demo fell on deaf ears (or did it?) in the industry. Undeterred, Vance continued his relentless quest to," ...bring real music to a manufactured world." In 2004, Vance and his then band, 300 grain, won the KTST (101.9 the Twister) country radio station's battle of the bands, which gave them the opportunity to be an opening act at the Country Fever festival; the largest country music festival in Oklahoma featuring several industry superstars. In 2005, -always wanting to push the musical limits- Vance hired a respected Bolivian producer, Ricardo Sasaki.

With a superb lineup of local musicians, Ricardo and Vance spent two weeks with the infamous Keytek in the Diamond Recording Studio of Oklahoma City crafting Vance's current demo titled," Vance Phillips." The new demo is receiving some attention from the local radio market with the help of Vance's long time publisher/management company Red Head Entertainment. With the recent resurgence of "outlaw country" in the mainstream, Vance is proud to be a part of the new Outlaw Country movement along with the new generation of REAL Outlaw Country stars.

Though you may not hear Vance on the corporate radio waves, experiencing his music live is the best way to "...get it." Vance delivers a live show like the legends of his grandfather's era fused with the energy and spirit of his own punk and metal influences. Against the grain, true to his spirit, and wildly experimental; Vance Phillips is the Pott. County Outlaw.