(Song: If I Could Forget You by Slate Hill Phil and friends, recorded early 21st century)

Memory is an almost infinite sea, the reflections in the water shifting constantly so that we see and retain only small parts of the larger image and not often accurately. In the old Norse stories, Mimir aptly guards the Well of Wisdom. We don't learn if we don't, can't or won't challenge our memory and try to dive into the water itself instead of being transfixed by the ugly and pretty pictures on the surface.

After all that, I can't actually remember meeting Phil Gianinni. He was just there at my house on Cherry Ave. playing guitar and sometimes banjo when my housemates and I had parties. Even at 15 years old, he was a gifted musician, songwriter, bandleader, showman, clown and racontuer. He was half my age in years at the time but musically, he was far older than I was. Until meeting Phil I'd never heard anyone play slide banjo at all let alone as well as Phil did, nor since. Around the time I met him, he'd played with John Jackson, the great Piedmont bluesman, at the Rotunda at UVa. It was quite the plum gig for a teenager and spoke of Phil's weight as a musician.

Phil performed under the moniker Slate Hill Phil but there was no persona assumed. Slate Hill Phil is who Phil actually was. His friends knew this but the world didn't. We also knew was that Phil was the real deal. Like all real deals, he was troubled in a way that few people could understand. His exuberant, joyful nature had a shadow side that he couldn't always get a handle on that would manifest itself as a self-destructive affair with all manner of intoxicants. It could make life weird and scary for those in his sphere and he lost some friends because of it. Those of us that loved Phil could always see beyond the weird, scary stuff but it wasn't easy somedays.

Phil's first band was composed of his brother Todd on bass and his friends Matthew Bain and Stefan Lessard on guitar and drums, respectively. They never left the garage. The drummer in Phil's first band is now known the world round as the bass player for DMB. Over the years, some of the best musicians in the area and Phil found each other because of his abilities as a songwriter and a bandleader. It's not easy herding musicians into a cohesive group but Phil had the gift.

Our paths crossed and recrossed many times over the years, in personal life as well as musical life. In the early 21st century, our paths intertwined for a spell. Phil and I reconnected after Phil had been asked to leave the Hackensaw Boys (my second wife's first husband's band) and he came back to Cville. Rumor has it he was later asked back but he declined. We picked together some here and there and then he started playing banjo in my band. It occasionally got hairy when Phil would get banned from a venue we were playing at but I never fired him. I might be the only bandleader who can say that. I valued his friendship and his musicianship more than I valued the personal opinions of venue owners. Phil fronted my band some weeks when I couldn't make it, assuming that he was allowed in the joint.

At one point, I needed to leave town for a while and just get away. I had no plan but to wander southwards. Phil wanted to go with me and I agreed. We meandered through Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama for some weeks. We were musical partners and called ourselves The Homeland Rangers. We busked in cities and small towns and only had to sleep in the van a few times. People dug what we did and put us up. Without a doubt, I was the sideman to Phil's front and I was happy to be in the role. He was the front for this simple logic: we made more money when he was the front. He had a move that only he could pull off, one of many moves. A woman or young lady would walk by us while we were busking and Phil would follow behind her still playing his banjo while making goofy faces. When she noticed and turned her head to look, Phil would execute a dramatic 180 degree turn, swinging his leg up and around and duckwalking back in my direction. A few of those manuveurs and onlookers and the women themselves would throw money at us.

Somedays, Phil would disappear for awhile. No matter where we were, Phil had the ability to conjure up a substance to abuse. I never asked or made a squawk unless his actions or the people he was dealing with crossed my borders.

After weeks of busking and semi-aimlessness, we decided to head back home. I took up with a woman not long after my return to Cville and my attentions were elsewhere. I'd see Phil sometimes and we'd talk on the phone here and there but after weeks of being together, we needed a break. The last time I saw him was mid-December 2006. He was busking in front of the Paramount Theater in Downtown Cville. Oddly, he was playing an accordion. I wish I'd stopped to play with him but I didn't, to my lifelong regret.

Phil died on December 23rd, 2006 in his grandmother's house in Belmont. Heroin overdose. Goddammit.

At this point, these kind of stories should wind up with the tale-teller's thoughts and memories on Phil's life. Phil wanted to be remembered for his songs, a task which I and many of Phil's friends have been deficient in seeing through. I hope to fix that a little bit here. The important things to know about Phil are found in his songs, not in the words of one of his surviving friends. Listen to a few and remember him if you knew and loved him or get to know him if you didn't. The old songwriter's joke, "My songs will tell you more about me than I ever will", certainly applies here.

Slate Hill Phil would've loved that joke.