Shawn Phillips Project [2021]

Over his 50 plus year career, Shawn Phillips has produced 19 albums. But ask anyone today to name a tune by the man who gave Joni Mitchell her first guitar lesson, dated Mama Cass, dropped acid with the Moody Blues, taught George Harrison to play the sitar … and you’d be hard pressed to find someone up to the task. But Shawn hasn’t let that stop him – nor has he been stopped by a boating accident in Italy that almost cost him his life, or an emergency quadruple bypass (that’s when he started running into burning buildings. Literally).

This documentary will tell the story of Shawn’s life and career – from sold-out stadiums to sparsely attended dive bars, from a 9-record deal with A&M to busking at the Santa Monica promenade. A through-and-through Texan who cut his teeth alongside Elton John at Trident Studios in England in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, Shawn’s a man whose great passion for even better music keeps him on the road traveling as a one-man-band, even at the ripe age of 76.