By ELIOT WILDER / A lonely troubadour, guitar in hand, wanders the streets, reflecting on the triumphs and trials of a small town's dreamers, schemers and scalawags. It could be any tiny burgh, but this one just happens to be the storybook Connecticut hamlet of TV's "Gilmore Girls." No matter. The singer is very much real. He's Grant-Lee Phillips, and he's doing what he's best at - recounting the blessings and tribulations of people's lives with a journalist's eye for detail and a poet's turn of phrase. Whether it's fictional Stars Hollow or factual Stockton, the agricultural city dead in the dry heart of California in which he was raised, Phillips' calling has always been about telling the tale.

From the time he first stumbled upon Harry Houdini and thus began to entertain family and friends with card tricks and sleight of hand - "I booked myself around town as a 10-year-old conjuror," he says - Phillips has had a show biz bug. Eventually he would learn to play guitar and write songs, team up with like-minded musicians to form Grant Lee Buffalo, release four critically lauded albums and tour sports sheds with the likes of R.E.M., whose Michael Stipe is a continued booster.

As with many such up-from-your-blue-suede-shoe-straps careers, the beginnings are inauspicious and humble, albeit in ways, just like the songs Phillips would go on to pen, that are steeped in American lore. He was surrounded by a flat, rural expanse of the San Joaquin Valley, which was, he says, "wide enough for a person like me to explore the countryside in a Huck Finn kind of way." There among the cherry orchards and walnut groves, in the part of the country that Woody Guthrie sang about and dust bowl families moved to for jobs during the Great Depression, a young man had time to reflect and ruminate. It was the early 1970s, and scratchy strains of Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and Tom T. Hall would emanate from the parents' hi-fi, but there was also the pull of the radio, where one could hear anything from David Bowie and Queen to Elton John and the solo Beatles. Metropolises like Los Angeles were beckoning burgeoning singer/songwriters, and a youthful Grant had already begun to yearn for something else, something grander than his life on the outskirts of Stockton.

Finger Pickin' Good

His first steps toward the big time were somewhat small in scale, performing at a not-exactly-world-renowned fried chicken joint off Highway 99 known as the Pollardville Palace, Home of the Chicken in the Sky. "Pollardville boasted a melodrama and vaudeville revival house and a gun slingin' ghost town," Phillips says. "There, I was given a shot at most anything I desired, singing, acting, juggling, train robbing, you name it."

Having multifarious talents was certainly no small bonus, but by his first year as a teen Phillips began to cotton to what would later become among his main passions in life. "One Christmas my parents gave me an electric guitar," he recalls, "and everything that I had to say that I couldn't say in any other fashion seemed to come through that guitar." Although he romped around the house just making silly noises with it for the first year or so, from the moment he learned to tune the thing as well as pick out a couple of basic chords, Phillips started composing songs. Subsequently and somewhat more importantly, he also discovered what joy there is in the act of creation. Soon he was playing blues guitar in the style of Lightnin' Hopkins while backing up a musical grandmother with a fondness for reinterpreting gospel songs and who also was very encouraging of his nascent talents.

And so it went, with Phillips spending much of his adolescence absorbing influences, honing his craft and exploring musical and philosophical possibilities that were for the most part outside the realm of many of his hometown peers. By the age of 19, with a batch of songs in his pocket, he was ready to head out of Palookaville altogether. "The big green metal sign for Los Angeles had hung from the main street overpass as long as I could remember," Phillips says. "I'd gazed up at it some 300 times. Now I was taking that sign for its word. LA was thataway. I piled every bit of show-biz apparatus I owned into the trunk and backseat of my Plymouth Satellite and set off around dusk."

Tripping the Light Fantastic

Shortly after swooping in on the City of Angels and tumbling to the fact that the film school he'd enrolled in wasn't really for him, Phillips roomed with fellow musician and Stockton alumnus Jeff Clark, whose vast and eclectic record collection was influential in widening Grant's musical tastes and outlook. The two would also eventually team up to form a band called Shiva Burlesque in which Jeff vocalized, Grant strummed and a cranky drum machine supplied the rhythm. It was the start of that George Orwellian decade, a time when a clutch of LA bands like the Dream Syndicate, the Rain Parade and the Three O'clock tuned in, turned on and dropped out into that brief flash of a lysergic movement known as the Paisley Underground. And Shiva Burlesque was along for the trip, so to speak. With the later addition of drummer Joey Peters and bassist James Brenner, who was in time replaced by Paul Kimble, the band went on to record two albums.

"We were a psychedelic type of group with surrealist leanings," Phillips says. "Jeff was the singer, supplied most of the lyrics and shared in the songwriting with me. I took a supporting role during that period because I'd decided that I wanted to see how someone else did things. He had a lot more experience in putting bands together, calling clubs and booking gigs. I suppose I could've learned the ropes on my own, but I think it was a matter of not having enough confidence. Being a country kid thrust into Los Angeles, I could only focus on one thing at a time - and for me, just surviving was enough."

Up on a Roof

Just surviving meant grabbing whatever jobs would put peanut butter in the cupboard, and for Grant it was all about starting at the top - of buildings, that is. "I slopped hot tar on roofs for ages," he says. "It was a dangerous job and something that you have to use every bit of your mental capacity to focus on to not lose your life. But I found that a lot of good songs came to me in that period. I would be up on roofs and I'd hear rhythms in the massive air conditioners that were chugging along, and I'd start humming and singing to that. At the end of the day I was covered in mastic, but I wound up with a song."

At this point, Phillips was in his middle 20s, and heavy on his mind was his future in music and his creative survival. Grant was feeling constrained by Shiva Burlesque and was anxious to be singing and writing on his own again. "About that time Joey, Paul and I were gradually becoming a group within a group," he says. "We'd go off in the night and play a gig under an assumed name. After a time, that band became the main focus."

The Buffalo Roams

Come the early '90s, and Grant and his two cohorts, having galvanized into a tight-knit performing unit, fairly washed their hands of most everything that had come before, including Shiva Burlesque and the whimsical aesthetic that went along with it. Phillips, growing ever more confident in his abilities and no longer willing to be anyone's Sideshow Bob, began to reconstruct his sound, sensibilities and songwriting into what would ultimately become Grant Lee Buffalo. Why the alter ego? "The invention of Grant Lee Buffalo," he says, "was a way of creating a subtle veil, which was at once a kind of character, but a revealing one at that."

The band signed with ultra-cool indie label Slash, and released "Fuzzy," which was kudoed by critics and embraced by fans. Michael Stipe declared it one of his favorite albums. CMJ said that "Fuzzy may be as darn near a flawless debut album as we're likely to get in 1993," and went on to compare Grant Lee Buffalo to such classic bands as Love, T. Rex, and American Music Club. With its cinematic scope, spiritual depth and poignant lyrics like, "We hunger for a bit of faith to replace our fear," "Fuzzy" seemed to indeed position the band on the perch of greatness.

"It was a pretty exciting time," Phillips says. "You're taken off guard as a young band. You don't know what all of it means to find your record on the shelf and your band name on a marquee. You're met with all sorts of new characters in your cast of relations, and a good many of them are there for the opportunity that your art/product represents. The na•ve parts of me thought, wow, there sure are a lot of new nice people around! Some of them have proved to be genuine, but it was a learning lesson."

Although early on Peters was also supplying the backbeat for Cracker, the three members of Grant Lee Buffalo put a premium on the insular sanctity of the band, with production chores for "Fuzzy," and the next two releases, "Mighty Joe Moon" and "Copperopolis" being handled by Kimble. "The three of us wanted to protect our opportunity to create something true to us," Phillips says. "We were pretty defensive of any outside influences. At times it was the three of us against the world, and we retained that when we went into our record-making days."

Focused 'Fuzzy'

As assured as it sounded upon its release, the debut album "Fuzzy" was born out of a "blaze of anxiety," as Phillips puts it. "There was so much pressure to make it great. Then there was the question in the back of your head: Will this be the last as well as the first? In some ways, that accounts for the urgency on the album, and it also accounts for whatever's misdirected on it. But I think it's a pretty solid record." Interestingly, Grant admits that he doesn't tend to listen to "Fuzzy" - or much of the rest of his own stuff - all that often, feeling that he lacks the objectivity to enjoy his work in a casual way. "It's just one of the penalties of being involved with their creation."

Always restless for something new and bolstered by the indie cred that "Fuzzy" garnered, Phillips began to compose songs for the group's sophomore effort, 1994's "Mighty Joe Moon." The making of that record found the group at its most energized and cohesive, and Grant thoroughly enjoying the challenge of welcoming new material and new directions. "By the time we got to 'Mighty Joe Moon' we'd gotten over the fear that we wouldn't be getting a second shot at making a record and we'd also learned a lot from the first album. This time we wanted to be more focused and to zero in on a certain kind of material that resonated in a distinct way. The confidence and solidarity was at its strongest when we made 'Mighty Joe Moon,' and because of that it's our best effort."

Before the second record the band had been on the road constantly, enduring all the highs and lows associated with being on tour bus of a somewhat motley group that was, as the expression goes, almost famous. "We'd been to hell and back with one another," Phillips says, "but it was an exciting version of hell, which also strengthened our musicianship." During this period it would seem that the band had nowhere to go but up, especially now that it would be performing in large venues, opening for megabands like R.E.M., Pearl Jam and the Smashing Pumpkins. But, alas, right at its peak, forces were starting to bring the mighty Buffalo down.

"After 'Moon' we toured and toured, and in some ways the tours took something out of us. Everyone was reacting to the stress of the situation. By the time we got to 'Copperopolis' I was writing songs and waiting for some kind of negative reaction from Paul, who was still producing. It was becoming harder to communicate, and that was ultimately what fractured our relationship creatively and personally."

Trouble in Copperopolis

With its more sumptuous production and lush orchestrations, "Copperopolis" appeared to be the band's most sophisticated and fully developed effort to date, making it near impossible to sense the many difficult tensions and negative feelings that followed it through to its fruition. "The troubles that set upon our group weren't unique - it's the age-old story," Phillips says. "Plus, I'm always longing to bring something new into the fold musically. It seemed the only way we were going to be able to do that was to continue as a two-piece."

And that's exactly what the band did. Kimble exited and the band brought in some gifted friends (Jon Brion, Dan Rothchild, even Stipe) as well as Paul Fox - producer of XTC, the Wallflowers and Robyn Hitchcock among others - to shepherd Grant Lee Buffalo through what would prove to be its jubilant swan song, the exotic "Jubilee."

"Paul brought a lot of optimism and energy to the project," Phillips says. "He was technically gifted and he was also musical, so he was a good guy for us. We weren't always the most patient band in the studio, but Paul coaxed that out of us. He brought a studio know-how to the project that we'd never employed before. And he was also willing to let us wing it. Overall, it was a good balance of a seasoned professional working with an unorthodox group of people."

Following the release of "Jubilee," the band was not exactly pleased with the way it was being treated (better: mistreated) by Slash, which long before had become absorbed by media giant Warner Bros. Whether Phillips & Co. had asked to be let go or was cut by the label is still not completely clear, but in the end it didn't matter to Grant, who was once again thinking about new adventures. "The core of the band had whittled down to myself and Joey, and we didn't always necessarily agree on everything. For me, if I was going to truly pursue my writing, then I had to cut my ties completely with the past."

This One's for the Ladies

Ties cut, Grant kept right on moving, never losing a beat in terms of writing, experimenting and working through ideas - which saw the light of day on his first solo album, the homegrown and independently released "Ladies' Love Oracle." Mostly acoustic, stirringly emotional and almost embarrassingly intimate (the cover shot shows Grant sitting on his bed with a guitar, staring at manuscripts splayed about), the album announced loudly in its hushed tones that Phillips, despite largely being out of the public eye for three years, was anything but a spent artistic force.

"A lot of folks have taken to the album in a real personal way. It's the kind of stuff that would've had a real hard time working its way through the opinions of industry suits." To be sure, "Ladies' Love Oracle," which came out in '99, also allowed Phillips to see that he could do exactly what he wanted in a totally uncomplicated way and without having to endure all the hoopla that comes with promoting a major label release. "And because it's such a sparse record," he adds, "I promised myself to be more experimental the next time around."

Which brings us to "Mobilize." New record, new label (the more artist-friendly Rounder) and new outlook. A chronicle of both his real and imagined life thus far, "Mobilize" is dense with idealism, longing and discovery - all informed with Grant's trademark compassion and wit. On it, Phillips plays nearly every instrument, save for the contributions of coproducer Carmen Rizzo, who adds otherworldly drum textures to the often alien-sounding but never alienating mix. It's an album populated with characters seeking inner strength, characters yearning for something, anything. It's also an album that taps into the joy we express for those we love and the pain and frustrations we harbor for those we love no longer.

Beyond all that, "'Mobilize' is a chance for me to discover a whole new palette of songs and sounds and issues," Phillips says. "Because I recorded it on my own and was learning how to operate the tape recorder and what microphones to use, it was a chance to make mistakes - and maybe that's the most appealing thing. It was an opportunity to make mistakes and, along with that, hopefully make some discoveries as well."

A Clarion Call

The title of the album itself is quite evocative. "It's a good word, and since I decided to call the album that I hear the word all the time. What does it mean to me? In this case it's a mobilization of the spirit. It's a very proactive attitude in terms of drawing upon your every emotional resource to make a good go of your life. I couldn't control much of the chaos that was part of the undoing process for Grant Lee Buffalo. And so 'Mobilize' has become in part my way of dealing with it. It's about people who say, 'Look, here's the strategy: I'm going to overcome a bad situation.' It's a word about strength, and hopefully that's what the album is about as well."

Expect that this won't be the last direction taken by the musically itinerant Grant-Lee Phillips. If anything it's merely a beginning for this lonely troubadour.

"I'm happy with this album, but I'm always ready to move on to the next thing," he says. "Long before an album is done I'm looking to the next record. I believe I accomplished what I set out to do with 'Mobilize.' But right now there's not so much a fork in the road as there is a whole table setting."