Columbus Monthly: Rise Up - The Unstoppable, Unknowable Willie Phoenix

Back in 2015, Columbus Monthly profile Willie Phoenix. Here is part of the article:

Musician Willie Phoenix seems to have an infinite supply of creative energy that, over the decades, has been poured into bands, recordings, riveting performances and a brush with big-time fame that ended with disappointment. These days, he’s playing dive bars for audiences that measure by the dozen, though he’s ever the entertainer, ever the rock star. Could a new album and fresh energy send him soaring skyward again? 

It’s Halloween night, and High Street is teeming with Ohio State students scurrying to and from bars and nearby rentals. I’m headed to Bernie’s, a basement deli and concert venue that opened in the ’70s, to catch a set by Blues Hippy and the Soul Underground-aka Columbus rocker Willie Phoenix, whose musical history in this town goes back as far as Bernie’s does. 

The show is running about an hour behind schedule, so Phoenix doesn’t take the stage until after midnight, following sets by two lackluster opening bands that draw only a handful of onlookers to this dark, dank room. One band spills beer onstage and pesters the bartender for more. The sparse crowd, which trends a couple decades older than the students on the sidewalks above, talks over the music and mills around the scattered bar stools and tables. Toward the back of the room, near the bathrooms and the sound man reading his book with a penlight, LPs and 45s by ’90s Columbus bands like Gaunt decorate the wall. 

Twenty years ago, there would have been a line out the door to see Phoenix perform at Bernie’s. Tonight, no more than 20 people have ventured in, but they all crowd the area in front of the stage when Phoenix walks to the mic. One middle-aged man is wearing a wig of black dreadlocks. “I’m 1985 Willie Phoenix,” he says. A woman grabs her friend’s arm and begins hopping in place, saying: “I get to see Willie Phoenix tonight! I get to see Willie Phoenix tonight!”

Columbus Monthly: A Tragic Roll Call

The Columbus Monthly in 2014 posted an piece about the deaths of a variety of musicians or those connected to the Columbus music scene. For whatever reason, the author of the piece is not named (perhaps a print to web oversight?), but it still packs a punch:

The first musician I personally knew-and regarded well-who died young was Joe Dunlap Jr., guitarist for the New Jivebombers, a guy who looked tough on stage, but was a sweetheart off. Murdered in his cab late one summer’s night. I was devastated. 

Co-founder of Singing Dog Records, Dave Wolfson, my college buddy and employer, disappeared while living in Chicago, turning up dead and decapitated in an Illinois ditch. Chicago is a tough town, foul play there is unlike foul play anywhere. Took years of bad dreams to get over that one. Dave, Dave, Dave. Sigh. What did you do? He opened a lot of record stores and made a lot of money. He was gone in his 30s. Buy low, sell high was his motto. But die young? What a waste. 

Three-fifths of my favorite Columbus rock-and-roll band, the Burners, has gone on to that great rehearsal in the sky, and I miss every dang one of them. Sweet Michael Gene Antler, guitarist, bassist and a musical god to me, died from his own hand. Singer Jamie Lyons and guitarist Micky Bletz made it to early middle age before they checked out, sort of from natural causes endemic to the music business I guess you could say. This was just one of the great roots rockabilly/rock bands of the day. Micky was the most visually exciting guitarist I knew, and Jamie virtually a singer on par with Jerry Lee Lewis, but without the piano.