Today we’d like to introduce you to Phil Circle.
Hi Phil, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
First of all, I want to thank you for this feature. I was fortunate enough to have Voyage Chicago do an interview with me back before COVID lockdowns. I’m really appreciative of what you’re doing at Voyage.
I was born in Chicago, the youngest of a large family. My dad was an economist and entrepreneur, my mom was a classical musician, writer and producer. Her dad, my grandpa, was a recording artist in the 1920-30s in Detroit. So, we all were raised with music in our lives and trained in it to some degree. What I found most interesting looking back as an adult musician was how the encouragement of my dad was really key to pursuing what I love. His recognition and nurturing of my entrepreneurial spirit and my willingness to try anything drove me to take the kind of risks inherent in being an independent artist. And in the late 1980s, when I made the official choice to make music my career, it was considered pretty out there to not go after a major record deal. I think it was a combination of youthful ego and blind courage, but it turned out to be the right decision to stay independent. Nowadays, as a coach, I have accrued decades of experience, mistakes and all, to draw upon for my students and clients.
At the end of 1988, I suffered respiratory failure from a combination of asthma and exhaustion. As I recovered, before even leaving the hospital, I decided that music would be my primary focus. My hustle would be applied to building a life around the art and business of music in the areas that most excited me. To continue to recover my health, I moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. While there, I skated by on odd jobs, live gigs, and the generosity of friends. I was also scrambling to get my skills caught up with the demands I put on them. After a few years, in 1992, I moved back to Chicago and dived into the most vibrant music scene in the country, playing the same stages as everyone from blues and jazz greats to new up and comers like The Smashing Pumpkins and Liz Phair. It was exhilarating, overwhelming, and a tremendous source of motivation.
In 1993, I was walking out of the public zoo in Chicago’s Lincoln Park with my then-girlfriend. I commented that “It’s too bad I don’t have a degree or proper certification, I think I’d make a good teacher. I know I’d enjoy it.” Two weeks later, the bass player from my band called me to offer me a job teaching general music at a private school. I applied, got the job, and promptly realized I was in over my head. A few months in, barely holding together my teaching gig, I was walking past Columbia College, a top arts school in downtown Chicago. On a whim, I walked in the door and asked how I find out about registering for classes. I was directed to a line down the hall. It was registration day. Two weeks later, I was in class.
By 1997, I had a music degree in composition and performance, with honors, released my first full-length album, was teaching full time and was playing the regional circuit with my band, sometimes five nights a week. By the year 2000, I was well established as a top music coach and local Chicago artist with critical acclaim and, well, I had a career as an independent musician.
Over the next several years, I continued to write, record, perform, and teach. I also managed to get married and divorced twice and dealt with bouts of deep depression, feelings of worthlessness, and suicidal ideations. This exacerbated the gene I carry for alcoholism and addiction. But I never let up. I continued to function at a high level. Maybe because of my health challenges early in life, I had learned to keep at it. No matter what, keep going.
In 2008, things began to shift into what I see now as a crucial element to the path my life has taken. I met and eventually married Megan Corse, an actor originally from Wisconsin. We met on stage in Chicago, as I had also begun to do some theater acting. In 2010, we had plans to move to Austin, Texas, but upon our arrival, everything had fallen through. So, we went to her parent’s place in Eau Claire, Wisconsin to buy some time. We ended up staying there several years, during which time I spent 9 weeks at Hazelden’s Betty Ford Clinic for treatment of my alcoholism and addiction. I haven’t had a drop or pinch since. While there, I played every venue in the Chippewa Valley and recorded a couple of short albums.
It was during our stay in Wisconsin that my wife and I took our first trip together to Los Angeles. We stayed with my good friend and fellow Chicago transplant, Ted Wulfers. Over the years, we returned many times and I recorded my music and my audiobook with him. We’ve also maintained relationships with many other Chicago transplants over the years, so we had a pretty good idea of this town.
After moving back to Chicago in 2016, I started my own private teaching studio for adults after years of working for others. COVID shut that down in 2020, along with any live shows I had planned, including a 25th anniversary one at the World Famous Cubby Bear Lounge. I adapted. Shortly, I was expanding my online store to carry music accessories. I had a top-notch remote setup and was able provide my students and clients with the same. In June of 2020, I sat down and wrote a song called “I See Hope.” I promptly recorded my guitar and vocal parts with my wife, Megan, adding some background vocals. I sent those tracks to my buddy here in L.A., Ted. Literally overnight, he added some more background vocals and an entire band. Megan then helped me create a video. By the end of the year, the video for “I See Hope” was featured in several film festivals, received award nominations from 6, and won two awards.
After years of going back and forth between Chicago and Los Angeles, my wife asked how I’d feel about her moving here to dig into the acting scene. I agreed wholeheartedly. So, as lockdowns ended, I went and opened my teaching studio back up. Only this time, I placed it in a popular neighborhood for the arts (think NOHO), and brought on several other teachers. After some time, Megan and I realized it was going to be more challenging than we thought being apart. She made it back to Chicago several times, including for a guest star role on Chicago Fire. But we were also spread thin. So, in one of our nightly phone calls, I blurted out, “I love L.A. and you know I want to open a school there, too. Why don’t I just move permanently?”
Before I even arrived here, I had a space for my little music school in Westwood. Before I was very far into building up my roster, I received an award for my coaching. This capped off 4 years in a row of the same award being presented to my Chicago school.
So, now I have Phil Circle Music in Chicago’s Wicker Park and Phil Circle Music in Los Angeles’s Westwood. I look forward to what this new year brings. Moving on.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
That’s always such an ideal question. I remember back in college, the classes would empty by half at midterms. Plenty of people signed up thinking that the arts are an easy road. They’re not. They’re rewarding as can be. But some of that comes from the joy we feel when we beat the odds. It also comes from using our lives to inform our art.
I know I touched on this question in my last answer, so let me dig a little deeper.
Things like clinical depression, alcoholism and addiction are insidious diseases. They get you believing there’s nobody in the world suffering like you do. And this can be made worse when you’re in the arts, partly because everyone’s more accepting, so you won’t lose your job as long as you show up and do your best work. But I assure you, living with these diseases is not necessary. Having been deep down those holes, they do not feed your art the way you might hope, and there’s nothing romantic about them. It’s a brutal place to exist. Music is truly an extraordinary tool for dealing with deep emotions or mental illness. But we should pull from every corner of our lives, good and bad. We’ll still create great music.
When I tried to kill myself with knives to belly, I got three responses. One friend quipped that he was just glad I had bad aim. Another friend said that if I had succeeded, he would have pissed on my grave. Most everyone else asked why I didn’t reach out. I looked back over my mental health challenges and see no difference between them and my physical ailments. Except people don’t put a stigma on asthma or COPD. I’m so glad to see well-known artists, athletes, and others in the spotlight speaking openly about these issues. We’ve got to start somewhere, and this is a good start.
After living through respiratory failure, pancreatitis, liver disease, two hip replacements, ODs, and being stabbed, it began to dawn on me that my survival had plenty to do with the grit. But because I’m a self-aware person and am always striving to grow and improve, I also stumbled upon an underlying cause. My own battle with feelings of worthlessness needed to be examined. Even my respiratory failure, a result of asthma, was propelled forward by my working myself unnecessarily hard and not caring for my health.
When I got out of my way, stopped comparing myself to others, quit with “this will do” or “I don’t deserve this;” that’s when awards started coming in, I began to attract the kind of students I love to work with, playing the kind of venues I like, and I began using that much lauded emotion, gratitude, It’s a powerful tool.
Most recently, upon my arrival to L.A., I was having trouble walking. It turned out to be time for a second hip replacement. I’m not that old at 56. It was a combination of a lifetime use of corticosteroids for asthma and hard drinking. That led to osteonecrosis, bone death. I had to get around on a crumbling hip for the last 7 months before it was diagnosed and I could get the surgery. This limited my ability to work as much as I like. Since it’s all on me to get my school filled up, it’s been tough.
Then one day, totally financially strapped, I asked my best pal, Megan, for some money to grab gas and a cane. I don’t like to ask for help, ever. That moment reminded me of something crucial to our existence: interdependency. Humans start dependent. Then we reach our own versions of independence. When we take it one more step into interdependency, we learn that deep connection we all have. Music accomplished this too.
Ultimately, I’ve come to see every obstacle or challenge in life as a means for growth. Additionally, as a coach for adult musicians, my myriad of experiences give me a lot of empathy for their struggles in music. I get to look back over my life so far and instead of asking myself why something happened, I recognize that it’s all been part of a path. In life, especially within the arts, it’s easy to feel like a victim of the world. But can assure anyone reading this that taking a proactive approach can be more easily found when you’re not feeling helpless.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
One of the reasons I touched on having an entrepreneurial spirit at the start of this interview is because I actually connect that to a freedom of expression. It’s my comfort with the business side of things that gives me creative freedom. For instance, I don’t sell anything in my online store that isn’t recommended by a fellow musician or requested by a customer, wherever they are. All the packing is compostable. I feel good about that.
I’ve always pointed out that business is a creative use of money, time and ideas. Who’s more creative than we are? A couple of years ago, I received a certification from Berklee School of Music for Creativity and the Entrepreneur. I’ve really tried to instill in my students and clients over the years the fact that they don’t need to change who they are to handle the business. They can just be themselves and use any number of effective approaches on social media, for instance. Like your art, your efforts in this area will evolve. And it’s never been easier than now to be heard.
What am I known for? My approach to handling business as a creative enterprise is one. On the creative side, I’ve gained a reputation as something of a musician’s musician, a songwriter’s songwriter. I’m pretty grateful for this because it really has been a lot of hard work to be good at what I do. That’s something I share with all my students and clients. I treat them like adults because they, of course. But the shortcoming of so much music education for adults is that it never evolved past teaching children. As adults we know how we learn effectively. I work alongside my students to guide them through building a solid foundation with their instruments. No matter what level they start at if they stick with it and follow through on the skill sets I give them, they always excel. I’m very proud of this. You can’t say you care about the world if you aren’t raising the next generation to be better than you.
I’m proud of how my school, Phil Circle Music Chicago, is being run beautifully by my team of teachers there. I had a very simple business model and I don’t really believe in business plans. So, this wasn’t by design. But, back in Chicago, I have a team that enjoys total empowerment, transparency, and autonomy. They all have keys to the school and access to the booking platform and shared email. They do all their own bookings, and payments go through our booking platform. They make about 50% more than other music schools pay. And also not designed, but I’m thrilled with it, is that they’re a diverse group of people. Their backgrounds, their musical choices, their histories and victories (one of them was just on Fallon), like everything else we do, informs their work as creative coaches. Because that’s really what we do. I can teach someone from zero to jazz or classical guitar in a year. But I’ve had many students stick around for ongoing coaching in everything from songwriting to production to life. I left two students in Chicago who are their sixties. One of them had no prior experience and I had him on stage at a popular venue not long before I moved. The other guy is recording an album. He just started writing tunes based on the coaching I gave him. I use the word “coach” because it implies, correctly, you’re getting more than some scales and chords. We work on mindset. We work on developing the unique creative voice that everyone has. We believe that everyone has unlimited potential. I’ve just seen too much positive evidence to not follow this path.
I’m deeply grateful to be doing what I do. There’s literally no aspect of my work that I don’t enjoy. Are there tedious things to do? Always. But that’s true no matter what you do for a living. I’m also proud that my music is starting to gain in popularity across the globe. There are a couple of simple reasons for this. One is that it’s never been easier to get your music out there and to connect it with a PRO (BMI, SESAC, etc.). This ease of release has resulted in more than half the earnings from recorded music here in the states going to independent artists. When people have a choice, they’d rather look for someone who’s telling their story. The other reason? I got out of my way, stopped overthinking, and let my life guide me to answers.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Another question that’s very current.
I’m going to start with, it’s not financially defined. I grew up pretty well-to-do and guess what; I never saw money making people happier. It was the people who had fulfilling lives that showed happiness. It’s not that I don’t want more money. I do. But my life is based in a philosophy that allows me to see the long haul. I have a deep sense of purpose. That’s what kept me going through the pandemic lockdowns, for instance. I must have checked in with 100 friends over 12 months, just to see how they were doing. That’s one way to get out of your own way, by the way. I’m driven to help every person I work with to achieve their highest potential. When I get on stage, which I love more than anything, that human energy in the room is irreplaceable. It’s that human connection and being part of advancing a better world through music and community; these are forms of success. And now that I’ve put my purpose at the forefront, I’m ready to make a ton of money. When it’s based on something deeper, your life attracts everything you need.
When I learn something new; when I inspire someone to break through their own limitations; when someone tells me my music tells their stories; when someone says I’ve saved their life; these are forms of success. And even if all of these things happened in the same day, I would still strive to become a better musical artist and to grow as a human being.
Pricing:
- $79 for your first hour of coaching. $75 after that.
- $67.50 when you buy blocks of ten.
- $125 for a house call. $75 for each additional hour.
- $125 for band coaching. $75 for each additional hour.
- $50 ask-me-anything for 30 minutes.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://philcircle.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/philcirclemusic
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/philcircle
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/philcircle
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/philcircle
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/philcircle
- Other: https://linktr.ee/philcirclemusic
