Today we’d like to introduce you to Philip Spiess.
Hi Philip, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers?
I started playing music in kindergarten with piano lessons and then clarinet in 5th grade. That didn’t last long when I was 13, I got my first guitar and taught myself how to play using tablature and playing by ear. I think that first year I had a guitar I about never left my room I just constantly played to the radio. In High School I formed my first band “Fishback” we were terrible but we had a t-shirt made that we used to sell at the school’s open mics and we played homecoming one year it was pretty cool. My senior year I started a new band “Union Street”. We used to go down to Union Street in Old Town Alexandria and street preform for hours and so we got really good. Eventually, we started playing regularly at a local club called the JAXX. Around this same time, my aunt started taking me to a roots music and arts festival called Common Ground on the Hill. The festival is still going and I am one of the lead audio engineers there now. That festival is really where I learned everything from audio engineering to musicality and a love for traditional music. I pretty much owe my entire career to that festival and the tutelage of Walt Michael and the rest of my Common Ground family.
Eventually my younger cousin Matt started coming as well and we started play a lot of music together. I started playing solo around the DC and Baltimore area and once Matt turned 16, he would accompany me on mandolin or fiddle. In 2018 we were getting ready to play at Common Ground and basically, we were like dam we should probably have a band name and make this official huh? So, we kept kicking around all these names as I was drinking a whiskey and coke from a mug that said probably whiskey on it. The name sort of stuck and now we sell the mugs with the words on it like the original on one side and our logo on the other.
In 2019 I released the first Probably Whiskey album. It was supposed to be just a quick EP to sell at festivals that summer as I was teaching audio engineering workshops. We got noticed by a promoting company Tinder Box and signed a contract with them and then the album went off on a College Radio run and topped out charting at 245 for 2019 on the College Radio Charts. From there it got licensed to Discovery Network and Food Network and Opra’s network O as well as a few others.
Up until then, I was doing music just as a side hobby. I had spent all of my 20’s working as a career fireman and in 2016 I started working for Prince William County Virginia Department of Fire and Rescue. December 2019, I left the department and started doing music full time and sort of went with the momentum we had built. At this point the band sort of became collections of musicians playing behind me as I toured or the gigs we booked allowed for varying numbers of performers.
Of course, then the pandemic hit, and everything got a lot harder haha. We took a lot of stuff online and I started writing a new album. The first album was all music I had written in high school and so this was the first time I had written new music in years. I really went back to the roots of Americana and the folk traditions I had grown up with and was working with. It’s a lot of songs that are historical stories from Virginia and the Appalachian Mountains. This week before Halloween we are releasing the first single off the album that is a true story about two slaves murdering their owner and cooking him down in his moonshine still at the old Graham Mansion in Wytheville Virginia.
It’s these kinds of stories that I really seek out a look to turn into songs. I also draw from the stories of my local area and people I have met or ran into firefighting. The new album ranges from song about the opioid crisis to the ever-growing struggle for small-scale farmers in the Appalachians.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I think with any art it’s always a mixed bag of whiplash and success. Especially taking the leap of faith into making music my career and then having the entire industry ground to a halt with covid-19 has been a wild ride. But even in normal times, you have to adapt and be flexible in the music industry and so we were able to grow our following online during the pandemic. Also being at home really gave me a lot of time to get better with my playing and songwriting and sort of “woodshed” it as it were.
Also, it’s still very surreal paying my bills by playing music. There are definitely moments of imposter syndrome where I feel like maybe somehow I got into situations that I’m not good enough or talented enough for. I think as with anything you will always find someone better at what you are doing than you are and sometimes that can be intimidating.
Also, I was diagnosed with PTSD from firefighting in October of 2018, and the experience of therapy and working through that struggle has been a huge influence in my music. In a way, it has given me a different way of looking at situations and people and in some cases, I find stories or events that I feel drawn to write about that I don’t think I otherwise would have noticed. In some cases, songwriting has also helped me work through certain things that were troubling me in my personal life as well.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I specialize in folk music and storytelling. Probably Whiskey is a mix of historical songs and new music written about what’s happening now. The new song though still are presented with the same traditional sounds and techniques coming from Appalachia. It’s the music I grew up with and the music I grew up learning how to play and so those styles definitely show through in my songwriting. I think what set me apart from others is I try to maintain the history or the stories that surround the songs I play. If there’s a reason or a history behind a song, I play I try to tell the story or introduce the song in its context. Music history is a huge part of what we do as a band and what I use for songwriting.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
I think one of my favorite childhood memories is holidays and playing music with my family. As I got older, I used to play guitar and my dad would play piano and the family would all sing when we got together for Christmas. This continued into when my grandmother was in hospice her last Christmas with us, I brought my guitar over and we all just sang Christmas carols.
Contact Info:
- Email: booking@probablywhiskey.com
- Website: probablywhiskey.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/probablywhiskey/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/probablywhiskey
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/WhiskeyProbably
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRj45b8ySU_6EQKj3an4HvA
- Other: https://probablywhiskey.bandcamp.com/
