Glen Phillips Issues Video For Poignant “Nobody’s Gonna Get Hurt” (premiere)

Glen Phillips‘ Swallowed By the New has received a second life via a new deluxe edition from Compass Records. Sweetening the deal is the addition of a new song, co-written by Lori McKenna, “Nobody’s Gonna Get Hurt”. In addition to the arrival of this new piece, Phillips now offers a new video for the tune (which features Amber Rubarth on backing vocals).

“I’m happy to have this song out in the world,” the longtime Toad the Wet Sprocket vocalist says. “Lori and I wrote it at her home just outside Boston. I’d been reading and listening to a lot of the poet and speaker David Whyte and was taken by his assertion that heartache is the inevitable byproduct of loving anything deeply. It’s a sign of a life well lived instead of something to be avoided. I came in with the title and an idea that the song should be entirely lies. Lori jumped in, and we finished it all in under two hours. That was a good day.”

For the accompanying clip, Phillips knew it would be important to accentuate the piece’s highly impactful emotional content. “We didn’t want to have a video that competed with the lyrics for attention, so we went with light and shadow and kept things simple.”

Swallowed By the New was written in the wake of the singer-songwriter’s 23-year marriage coming to an end. And features producer/bass player Paul Bryan (Aimee Mann, Lucinda Williams), Jay Bellerose (drums), Chris Bruce (guitar), Jebin Bruni (keys) and Ruby Amanfu (vocals) as well as a range of remarkably poignant pieces such as “Held Up”, “Grief and Praise”, and “The Easy Ones”.

Phillips will make his Grand Ole Opry debut on June 20 and will also perform a solo acoustic show on June 22 at Musician’s Corner in Nashville. He is on the road with Toad the Wet Sprocket this summer (dates available here).

Swallowed By the New (Deluxe Edition) is available for purchase at Compass Records.