Phil Vassar Mourns the Album He Did ‘for Nothing’

Phil Vassar is, to use a popular football analogy, going to drop back and punt after the release of his most recent album, 'Traveling Circus.' Thanks in part to digital downloads -- with fans often preferring to download one song as opposed to buying a whole album -- he's rethinking the entire process.

"I don't even know why we do albums anymore," Phil tells The Boot. "I don't think we will for much longer. I think it's going to go back to singles, the way it was when the Beatles came out -- maybe five or six songs each [album]. I think that's where we go from now on."

But the decline of full CDs isn't solely to blame for Phil's musical woes. "I just released this album, and my label merged with another label, so the album basically got shelved," he laments. "So I just did a whole 11-song album for basically nothing. So now I'm already working on another one. It's just crazy at this day and age how things are. Nobody knows how to do it. But what I'm going to keep doing is try to write the best songs, and put out the best songs I possibly can."

Phil's label, Universal South, merged with Toby Keith's label Show Dog Nashville to become Show Dog Universal Music. And although Phil has the utmost respect for Toby and is looking forward to working with his new boss, he's taking a wait-and-see attitude when it comes to releasing new material.

"It remains to be seen how things are going to work out," says Phil. "I like everybody. I love Toby, and I love the guys that worked at the other label, but when these kinds of things happen ... nobody kind of knows what to do first. It's really an overwhelming task for these guys. I don't know how in the world they can possibly do it. Artists are so responsible for doing things themselves because record labels don't do what they used to do. They don't develop artists ... tour support, all these things. These are all an artist's responsibility. So basically the only thing labels do anymore is try to get songs played on the radio ... that's it. That's all they do."

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