Reclusive musician on album 57 and counting

You’ve probably seen his face on billboards around the state. You might have heard his music in commercials aired on Channel 10. And if you’re an eagle-eyed driver, you may have even noticed the stretch of Route 95N adopted by Phil Vincent, a hardworking local rock musician with a quirky marketing strategy and an even more unusual work ethic.

“They worked!” the Cranston native exclaims over the phone when I tell him I was curious about the billboards, needing to get to the bottom of who this guy is. He tells me a few minutes later that he plans to expand the billboard campaign into Massachusetts and Connecticut, though outdoor advertising is considerably more expensive in those markets.

Touring isn’t as lucrative as it used to be for most bands, but that’s not really an issue for Vincent since he rarely performs in public. That partly explains his need for creative marketing solutions. “I’m really a recluse,” he says. “I don’t like performing in front of people. If I know people, it’s kind of stressful. It’s not a stage fright thing, it’s just uncomfortable.”

Instead of touring, he spends time in the studio working on new material and releasing two or three albums a year, between solo work and several bands, each with different lineups. He fronts the British band Legion, an American band called D’Ercole, and also a two-man band he named Cranston, who have a third album in the works.

There was also a band called ZVP, a trio that released two albums before the passing of guitarist David Zychek. (Texas Monthly called Zychek “the greatest guitar player you’ve never heard of.”)

Vincent released his 57th overall album in late May, the thirteenth release for his quartet Tragik. “I’m gonna say what every artist says, it’s my best one yet,” he laughs.

The music is melodic hard rock with a metal influence. Vincent sings and plays guitar, bass, keyboards and drums on the album. He says his influences include Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Soundgarden, the Beatles, and Dokken. He also likes Queen.

“Queen albums are great,” he says. “Queen would do one hard rock song, one ballad, one song that sounded like the 20s. Everything on the album was different from what came before it.”

Vincent learned the drums first. “Much to my parents’ chagrin,” he says. “We lived in a big house, and they redid the attic, and I made a lot of noise up there. Drums, then guitar, piano lessons… And then singing. I just started singing, I didn’t take any lessons or anything. I should have, maybe, depending who you ask.”

“A friend of mine said music is a continuing recycling project,” he adds. “You can’t really create new music, all of the note configurations have already been done.”

Vincent’s label, Rock Company Records, is based in the Netherlands. “I’ve been with them since 2000,” he says. “They’ve been really helpful with the promotions. Financially they back it up. It’s not cheap having billboards, commercials, and streaming.”

Sales of physical music is way down from twenty or even ten years ago. In the United States, streaming services accounted for about 84 percent of album listening in 2023, according to data journalist Florian Zendt. While streaming pays only a small fraction of what physical sales or radio royalties provide to an artist, there are upsides to streaming since international shipping is considerably more expensive than it used to be.

“Most of my music sells overseas,” he says. “In 1998 when I started this, a guy in Germany bought a CD from a magazine ad I put out, and he told people about me, and it spread from there. Whenever I put an album out, there are 1200 to 1500 people in Europe who buy it right away because they already know me and know what I do.”

Vincent says he mostly receives positive feedback. “My thing is, if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything. You might not like something somebody does but if that’s their passion, don’t slam their passion. But if the people complaining are that unhappy with their lives, let them complain. Freedom of speech, right? Let them do it. Would they come up to me and say it to my face? Probably not.”

He brings up one comment on the social forum Reddit. A few months ago, the user called u/quasicoherent asked “Who is this Phil Vincent dude and where does he get the means to self-promote his music on billboards and television commercials?”

In a follow up reply, he calls Vincent’s music “silly hair metal.” Visually, a lot of the album art is certainly reminiscent of the hard rock wave of the late 1980s and early 1990s—flames, scantily clad women, and sci-fi imagery all make multiple appearances.

“I don’t know what the problem is,” Vincent says. “Maybe the billboard’s right outside his window and I’m the first thing he sees in the morning. I could see not liking me if that was the case.”

Tragik’s new album Crescendo is out now, and can be found through Bandcamp and on streaming services.