Ohio Singer-Songwriter J. Michael Phillips Collaborates with Yelawolf on Debut Album

Yelawolf (left) and J. Michael Phillips. Credit: Edward Crowe

To say that singer-songwriter J. Michael Phillips had a rough childhood would be an understatement. Phillips, who grew up between Tacoma, WA, and Toledo, says he never lived anywhere for more than two years.

“I moved a lot,” he says via Zoom from Findlay, where he was visiting his parents. J. Michael Phillips, who who’ll release his new album, Whiskey & Roses, next month, opens for Yelawolf at 7 p.m. on Friday, July 11, at House of Blues. “It was low-income and single mother. It was just me and my sister. I was the new kid at school all the time. I had a stepdad but he was really abusive to me and my mom. I had a big chip on my shoulder because of it.”

He says that as the new kid at school, he would see the bullies and beat the bullies up.

“I was the kid that everyone came to,” he says. “It got me in trouble. I was fighting other people’s fights when they wouldn’t fight their own fights. It caused me a lot of trouble. My mom told me I was too loyal of a friend, and I needed to stop putting myself out there and getting in trouble. That is how I grew up for real — I was running with the underdogs and fighting for the underdogs.”

Because his grandmother wrote cards for Hallmark and his mother was a songwriter, Phillips inherited a knack for writing.

“People ask me how I write songs,” he says, adding that his mom used to listen to country acts such as Alabama, Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers and his dad introduced him to Run D.M.C. and Wu Tang Clan. “It comes naturally. I feel like everyone could do it. For me, it’s just in me. I went to prison and spent a lot of my life there from the time I was 15. I always turned to music. It was escape or therapy for me.”

In prison, he says he used to have guards bring equipment in for him to record music (one reportedly snuck a microphone to him underneath a Chipotle bowl). Phillips would send flash drives with his music to his friends on the outside, who would mix the tracks and post them on iTunes.

“It was crazy,” he says when asked about how the prison guards helped him out. “They respected me so much for asking them for creative stuff instead of drugs. I was so focused. I had this vision of creating music and getting it out to people.”

“Kitchen,” one of the main tracks on his independently released album, Urban Cowboy, became an underground hit.

“That came after one of my best friends overdosed on a bad pill,” he says of the track. “My youngest son was about to be born a month later, and I wrote that track about all of that. My whole life I had sold drugs, and I was tired of it. I needed to do something.”

His first introduction to Yelawolf came via Yelawolf’s hit “Pop the Trunk.”

“It was amazing when I first heard it,” he says. “I was like, ‘This dude is dope.’ He was like punk rock. He was country and gangsta rap. To me, that is what I’m made up of. I’m made up of all these things too. I really respected his artistry.”

Phillips posted a video of his original track “Diamond Ring” online and tagged Edward Crowe, Yelawolf’s manager. Much to Phillips’s surprise, Crowe saw the post and signed him to his management roster. Crowe eventually introduced Phillips and Yelawolf, and the two worked together on the recordings that would become Whiskey & Roses.

Phillips says he “kinda tricked” Yelawolf into collaborating on the album.

“Before you knew it, he was four songs in, and I told him we should do a project together,” says Phillips.

The single “I Swear” features Phillips’s deep vocals at the start and commences with a Johnny Cash vibe. Yelawolf appears later in the track to lay down rapid-fire raps.

“The song is dark and confident and has a ‘I’m not afraid feeling,'” says Phillips. “We had to send to Wolf, and he loved it. I couldn’t imagine what he did and his first verse is so melodic. He follows it up with a heavy rap, and it’s the perfect combination.”

The album officially arrives the date of the House of Blues show, and the two will perform “I Swear” together during Yelawolf’s set.

“I think this album is something the fans will truly love,” says Phillips. “I bring something out of Yelawolf that people haven’t heard in his music, and he brings something out of me. We elevate each other and work great together. People will be so shocked by this album.”