Maestro of geek chic

In June 2005, Patrick Phillips posted on Craigslist about an orchestra he was creating that would concentrate on film music. Not even a week later, he had 25 eager people sitting in their chairs in the rehearsal room. They put together their first concert, called Heroes and Villains, featuring music from Star Wars and The Incredibles, in one and a half months, and the Austin Wind Symphony hasn’t slowed down since.

Patrick still marvels at how quickly it happened and how strong the group still is, despite some initial setbacks. “We lost a lot of people who were used to playing more classical things, things that were a little bit less emotional. I was asking for some pretty high emotion with some pretty hard music and it was a challenge. We still do have a core group of people who stayed throughout that transition, and they’re some of the greatest musicians in the group. I wouldn’t trade them for anything.”

Maestro Patrick Phillips of the Austin Wind Symphony is a fascinating guy – sit him down for a few minutes and you’ll be swept up into his passions like there’s nothing else in the world. His passions don’t end with film music. He’s also a self-confessed geek – a science fiction geek, a conspiracy theories geek, a band geek, a Second Life geek, and probably many more. His other great passion is his Internet radio show, The Patrick Phillips Show, where he explores any topic that interests him via interviews with any person that interests him, anyone from celebrities to singing psychics. His speaking voice reflects this radio background – confident, with strong inflections, the sincerest radio deejay voice you’ve ever heard. The Austin Wind Symphony and The Patrick Phillips Show are his two greatest passions, and they have a very interesting, intertwined history.

It all started in 1996 when Patrick was 17 years old and working at an electronics store called Babbage’s after school in Mesquite, Texas. Instead of being a sullen and bored retail employee, he delighted in playing around with the customers, doing things like making two strangers in the store hug each other, making friends with everyone who walked in the door, and just being an all-out ham. “I was just very over-the-top,” he says. Another employee noticed Patrick’s penchant for the ridiculous and asked him if he’d help him get his cameraman certification by hosting a fake talk show program. Patrick said yes. Come filming day, the fake guest for the fake show never showed up, but Patrick’s friend still needed to film something to prove his camera work. Patrick said, “Just put the camera on and we’ll see what happens. Trust me.” In typical ham-Patrick fashion, he turned to the camera and said in his best talk-show host voice, “Hi there, folks, and welcome to an all-new edition of The Patrick Phillips Show!”

This accidental show hosting appealed to Patrick so much that he began filming a real Patrick Phillips Show in earnest. “It really spoke to people because it was a young person talking to them, speaking their language. We really hit a market that no one was hitting.” Before he knew it, the show was growing. It originally aired on local cable but very soon ended up airing all across the Dallas metroplex. Much to Patrick’s surprise, the media began to bombard him with attention. In 1998, when he was 19, David Letterman’s and Rosie O’Donnell’s people called him, both wanting him on their show. “They were fighting over me!” Patrick says in disbelief. “They kept saying, ‘Don’t go on the other’s show, because if you go on their show, you can’t come on our show for three months.’” Unfortunately, none of it panned out because Patrick’s producer sent the shows a poor demo.

At this point, Patrick started getting celebrities on the show, like Burton Gilliam from Blazing Saddles and Erin Grey from the Buck Rogers TV show. The mayor of Roswell, New Mexico actually flew out to let Patrick interview him about aliens. “I had celebrities on, but for me, it wasn’t the celebrity that made the show; it was the guy who worked part-time at the local donut shop who just happens to sing Mary Poppins tunes through his nostrils. You never knew what you were going to find, and that was part of the fun.”

With the advent of the Internet and the luxury of having a father with a server, in 1996 Patrick turned his show into the first 30-minute full online broadcast. His viewership went through the roof. “I started getting a lot of emails and guest suggestions and I really started to embrace the Internet at that point.”

He also enjoyed a bit of fan attention from unexpected corners. “As it turns out, it was the jocks and old people who were watching the program, not geeks. Eighty-year-old women were hugging me in the supermarket. ‘Hey, aren’t you Patrick Phillips? Give me a lil’ kiss!’ Then the jocks would come up and hit me and I’d duck for cover, like, ‘What did I do to you?’ And they’d say, ‘Dude, bro, I watch your show, man – it’s awesome.’ There are a lot of nerdy jocks out there.”

All throughout the tenure of the original Patrick Phillips Show, Patrick had never abandoned his first love, music. He’d been a director for Garland Civic Theater, written several musicals, written original scores, and worked extensively with live musicians. In 2001, when AT&T decided to buy TCI, the now-defunct cable company that hosted the Patrick Phillips Show, “I decided it was time to bail out and start concentrating on band. I realized it wasn’t TV that was my calling; it wasn’t being a host. I’m way too pasty and pale for that. It was music, precisely film music.” So he founded the DFW Pops, a small community orchestra. “They were great, but they just didn’t quite understand film music. Their hearts weren’t in it.”

In 2004, Patrick moved to Austin. He kept getting emails asking him to revitalize The Patrick Phillips Show. “I decided, okay, let’s see what happens. Let’s do it all new for the Austin audience. Keep Austin Weird. I’m weird. Let’s try it.” But he was done with the stress of hosting and was ready to move behind the scenes. He posted on Craigslist and assembled a crew of five. They shot two episodes together, but Patrick hated the lighting and camerawork. “We interviewed Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation) and most of the interview was with my microphone off because the producer had it off. And he kept shooting Wil Wheaton’s name tag.”

Patrick again made the decision to stop doing The Patrick Phillips Show for a while to concentrate on music. In June 2005, he founded the Austin Wind Symphony. “I wanted to do music that I was passionate about because I knew that if I seemed passionate about it, I could possibly win over a few people.” In addition to performing concerts, the Austin Wind Symphony is branching out into recording scores. They recently performed a score to a film called Pigeon Impossible by Lucas Martell, one of their musicians. The film will be on screen and Patrick will be conducting directly to it. They are the one of the only organizations in town who does this. “Outside of LA and New York, there are very few organizations that do that, and since Austin is such a huge film town, we’d like to encourage more independent film makers to utilize the local people who aren’t union to do their scores.”

At this point, with his passion for movie music in a firm outlet, Patrick decided to revive The Patrick Phillips Show, but this time in audio form. He had the technology to make the show entirely self-sufficient so he wouldn’t have to worry about bad producers or cameramen focusing on his guests’ name tags anymore. He wanted to keep touching on topics he’d covered in the TV show but “wanted to give it more of a descriptive Art Bell, George Noory-type program.” Interviews were to be the main focus. “I wanted to have on celebrities who may have fallen out of the media’s eye but they’re still very much alive and involved in charities and things like that.” He’s recently talked to David Newell, who played Mr. McFeely on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, and Walter Koenig, who plays Chekov in the original Star Trek. His most recent interview was with Noel Neill, the actress who played the original Lois Lane in The Adventures of Superman. “Sweet woman,” says Patrick. “She was very spry at 91.”

His guests seem to love him, most likely because Patrick actually listens to them, a quality that has recently become almost non-existent in current talk-show practices. “I’ve learned the valuable lesson of listening to people. The reason they’re called guests is that they’re there to share something with you. And if you don’t allow them to do that, then it’s The Patrick Phillips Show, literally.” One of the pros to being an Internet show is that you can say things you couldn’t on TV. “Wil Wheaton said the f-word in response to my question about how he felt about 9/11. He was very upset and angry and that emotion came out and it was good. It was a candid thing that we don’t normally see.”

Among his favorite interviews is Fran Baskerville, the singing psychic, who became psychic when she was hit by an 18-wheeler and now sings predictions to the tune of her guitar. Another of his favorites is David Newell, Mr. McFeely on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. “After growing up watching Mr. Rogers, talking to and getting to interact with Mr. McFeely was incredible.”

As for his favorite Austin Wind Symphony performances, Patrick counts God of War as one of his favorites. “It’s really epic and huge. It makes me feel like I have chest hair. Even more than I already have.”

The Austin Wind Symphony will be playing God of War in their next concert, The Music of Video Games, which will be on Friday, March 7. They’ll also be playing selections from Medal of Honor, Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, Superman Returns, Kingdom Hearts, Morrowwind, Mario Bros., and Halo. In May, they’ll be performing the music of Indiana Jones.

What makes Patrick Phillips remarkable is that he channeled his geeky passions into creative outlets not just for himself, but for other people too. The listeners of The Patrick Phillips Show are grateful that someone is still caring about science fiction actors and UFO sightings. The musicians in the Austin Wind Symphony are grateful for the musical outlet, and the fans are grateful for live performances of their favorite film music.

But why does he do it? “I was a geek and I got teased in high school, so I decided to make something out of it, just be who I am and see what happened.”

Make sure to check out the next Austin Wind Symphony concert, The Music of Video Games, on Friday, March 7, at 8 p.m. at Bethany Lutheran Church. Check out austinwindsymphony.org for more information.

If you’re interested in auditioning for the Austin Wind Symphony, contact Patrick at patrick@austinwindsymphony.org. If you have ideas or tips for The Patrick Phillips Show, contact Patrick at patrick@patrickphillipsshow.com.