I first met Utah Phillips at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, must have been '77, there was him, Jack Elliot and I think it was Gamble Rogers and while I'd gone to the fest thinking I wanted to tap the brains of Bruce Cockburn, it was these three that inextricably captured my young mind and set me on my rightful course. I was mesmerized. I stuck to those three like glue and y'know, not one of them said a thing about it, instead I got a few invaluable post-show guitar tips and a lot of backstage c'mon along, son invites.

S'long, Utah. Its been swell. See ya.

I could name you a long list of ordinary amazing heroic things Utah Phillips did with his life, ordinary not in the sense that everyone else does anything close to it, but ordinary in the sense that, when you'd met him, it was perfectly natural to imagine him at the front of all those many frontlines, just being sensible

"the last TV set I had, I shot. I don't know what commercial importunement drove me off of the pier, but I hauled it into the backyard. It was up in Spokane, Washington, and I got a -- had an old Stevens shotgun. I tied a scarf around it for a blindfold and scotch-taped a cigarette to the front and lit it and let it burn an appropriate amount of time, and then I blew a hole through it with the shotgun. It was out there in the lilac hedge, which grew through it eventually. It was kind of pretty after a while. But I have not -- you know, I haven't owned one of those foolish things since."
[ Legendary Folk Musician, Activist Utah Phillips, 1935-2008 ]

You can find the full interview plus clips, tracks and other stories of social import, not surprisingly, over at DemocracyNow.org; a wide-brimmed hat tipped to Lovolution for the news.