Casual fans know Grant-Lee Phillips through his former band Grant Lee Buffalo, a perpetual opening act for REM in the ’90s. The group reached a commerical peak in 1994 with the radio hit “Mockingbirds” and Phillips won Rolling Stone’s “Best Male Vocalist” award in 1995.

But the essence of Grant Lee Buffalo never surfaced in the mainstream. Phillips, now a solo artist, has based his career on exploring (and amplifying) roots music while loading his material with American folktales and protest songs. Though lacking the fame of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, Phillips stands with them among the most quintessentially American of songwriters.

Phillips’s solo career began with the disbanding of Grant Lee Buffalo and the release of Ladies’ Love Oracle on Magnetic Field Records in 2000. This year brought Mobilize, a critical favorite on Zoe/Rounder Records and so in wider circulation than Oracle. The success of that album remains to be determined, as Phillips has postponed touring indefinitely in the wake of last month’s tragedies.

Grant-Lee Phillips was raised in Stockton, Calif. by religious parents and discovered his desire to perform at a Vaudeville revival theatre in nearby Pollardville. He got his first electric guitar at thirteen and, by his own account, “pretty much began writing songs the minute I learned a G chord.”

Numerous attempts to start bands in high school led nowhere, so Phillips took graduation as a chance to leave for Los Angeles. Following a stint in the moderately successful Shiva Burlesque, Phillips formed Grant Lee Buffalo with bassist/keyboardist Paul Kimble and drummer Joey Peters. After gigs at the Caf