John Craigie + Glen Phillips

Live at the Eccles presents JOHN CRAIGIE + GLEN PHILLIPS on Friday, February 21, 2025 at the Capitol Theatre in downtown Salt Lake City. ArtTix is the official source for tickets for Live at the Eccles events.

Much like community, music nourishes us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It also invites us to come together under the same roof and in a shared moment. In similar fashion, John Craigie rallies a closeness around music anchored by his expressive and stirring songcraft, emotionally charged vocals, lively soundscapes, and uncontainable spirit. The Portland, OR-based singer, songwriter, and producer invites everyone into this space on his 2024 full-length album, Pagan Church. Following tens of millions of streams, sold out shows everywhere, and praise from Rolling Stone and more, he continues to captivate.

“The music is always evolving and devolving with each new record,” he observes. “With my last album Mermaid Salt, I really wanted to explore the sound of isolation and solitude as everyone was heading inside. With this record, I wanted to record the sound of everyone coming back out.”

In order to capture that, he didn’t go about it alone… 

Instead, he joined forces with some local friends. At the time, TK & The Holy Know-Nothings booked a slew of outdoor gigs in Portland and they invited Craigie to sit in for a handful of shows. The musicians instinctively identified an unspoken, yet seamless chemistry with each other. Joined by three of the five members, Craigie cut “Laurie Rolled Me a J” and kickstarted the process. With the full band in tow, they hunkered down in an old schoolhouse TK & The Holy Know-Nothings had converted into a de facto headquarters and studio, and recorded the eleven tracks on Pagan Church.

“At first, I knew ‘Laurie Rolled Me a J’ would sound great with a band, but we realized there was this chemistry between us,” Craigie recalls.

During this season, Craigie listened to everyone from JJ Cale, Michael Hurley, and The Band to Donny Hathaway and Nina Simone. He also consumed music biographies and documentaries on the likes of Ani DiFranco, John Coltrane, The Velvet Underground, and Neil Young. Now, he introduces the album with “Where It’s From.” Dusty acoustic guitar underlines his warm delivery as he warns, “Be careful with this feeling. You don’t know where it’s from.” Meanwhile, he plugs in the electric guitar on the Southern-style boogie of “While I’m Down.” Bright organ wails over a palm-muted distorted riff as he urges, “Come on and love me up while I’m down.” 

Then, there’s “Good To Ya.” Setting the scene, glowing keys give way to a head-nodding beat. He laments, “Oh babe, I was good to you,” before a bluesy guitar solo practically leaves the fretboard in flames. The album concludes with the pensive and poetic title track “Pagan Church.”  In between echoes of slide guitar, he repeats, “I sing a pagan song out in a pagan church.”

“Taylor Kingman suggested the title Pagan Church to me,” he reveals. “I liked the multiple meanings. The album cover shows all of us in front of Laurelthirst Public House in Portland, which is an important gathering place for musicians in the area. It’s almost a church in a way. However, the song has an entirely different meaning.”

An incredible journey has brought Craigie to this point. He has consistently packed venues across the country, gracing bigger stages each time he rolls through town. His annual #KeepItWarm Tour has become a holiday tradition as it supports regional non-profits focused on fighting food insecurity with a donation of $1 from each ticket purchased. Showcasing another side of his voice, he has recorded “Beatles Lonely” versions of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road,  recording these seminal albums live to sold out audiences, and releasing them on vinyl for Record Store Day 2022 & 2023. Beyond touring with Langhorne Slim, Brett Dennen, and Bella White, he has also sold out his annual river trip on the Tuolumne River, just outside of Yosemite in California and graced the bills of Newport Folk Festival, Pickathon, Mariposa Folk Festival, High Sierra Music Festival, and many more.

In the end, Craigie channels the power of community in Pagan Church.

He leaves off, “I just hope you can hear the collaboration with this amazing band of musicians and hear the energy in the songs of people who are allowed to get out and do their art again in this chaotic world.”

I’ve been playing a songwriting game for about a decade now, led by Matt The Electrician of Austin TX. Every Friday he sends out a prompt and 15-20 of us have a week to write a song that includes the prompt. Sometimes it’s just a way to stay in shape creatively and participate in a community, but it’s also often an opportunity to see what is lurking just below the surface of my consciousness, waiting to be explored and expressed. I’ll find myself writing songs I didn’t know I needed to write. This album is a collection of 11 of those songs. They all come from a process of discovery and surprise. I wasn’t sure if they’d fit together, but somehow they manage to cover the journey of the last few years, from the trials and silver linings of lockdown to the tensions of our uncertain human future to the unexpected joy of allowing myself to fall in love again. 

The album was tracked by my dear friend John Morgan Askew, with whom I’ve collaborated on the Secrets of the New Explorers EP and the RemoteTreeChildren project. We spent 10 days at Bocce Studios in Vancouver WA getting basic tracks and vocals recorded. John recruited Ji Tanzer (Blue Cranes) to play drums and Dave Depper (Death Cab For Cutie) on bass, guitar and keyboards. Ji and Dave created a distinctive baseline that helped define the palette for the record. Cory Gray also came by and played piano on a couple tracks. Dave Depper was a huge force on this record - his creativity and enthusiasm were key to making these songs come alive in the studio.

Over the next many months I recorded more vocals, keys and guitars on the road and at home. In that process I also brought in Sean Watkins (Nickel Creek) for guitar, Dominique Arciero, Natalia Zukerman and Hannah West for vocals, Dan Lutz for upright bass and Garry West for bass guitar.

After I added so many tracks that I felt a little lost, Mikal Blue helped me unstick the record and figure out how to unify all the songs. Matt Coles took care of the final mix. 

My last album was about loss and grief, which was also what my life was about at the time. It was a long process to come out of that personal chapter. In the last few years I started to come out of hiding. The wounds no longer needed licking. The past no longer took the majority of my attention. As I learned to show up for the life in front of me, I found the capacity to risk falling in love again. There’s no pure happy ending - the world is a mess, the future is uncertain - but I find over and over the truth in Mary Oliver’s words: “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” I’m paying better attention, some days more than others, but working to develop the skills of gratitude and mindfulness. I was lucky and privileged during the covid lockdown to move in with my girlfriend (now wife), and to stay home for the longest stretch I’d had in more than twenty years. I got to notice the little things. After a life of travel and peak experience I began to appreciate more of the beauty of subtlety and sitting still. There is so much here, in the space around me, in the sensations of my body, in the sounds and smells and tastes and thoughts that emerge and drift away. It’s not a novel concept, but it is a novel experience when you’ve spent your life running from one thing to another. This is an album about showing up for what is and letting it be enough.