Rocker Liz Phair bringing 'Exile in Guyville' tour to Tucson

The critics were gushing over Liz Phair's debut album “Exile in Guyville” when it was released in June 1993.

They praised the then 25-year-old indie rocker’s “blunt and honest” lyrics that talked about sex in sexually explicit language against a musical hybrid of indie rock and lo-fi. They were hypnotized by Phair’s trademark low, vibrato-less monotone vocals that seemed to give many of her songs, including the enduring lead-off single “Never Said,” an almost detached sense.

Phair was inspired by the 1972 album “Exile on Main St.” by the Rolling Stones, who Phair considered to be the most “guy band” around. “Exile in Guyville” was her song-by-song response from a woman’s perspective.

Phair remastered and re-released “Guyville” on its 25th anniversary in 2018, and to mark its 30th, she is hitting the road to perform the album cover-to-cover. “Liz Phair: Guyville Tour” comes to the Rialto Theatre on Wednesday, Nov. 8. The tour opened on Nov. 3 in California and runs through early December.

We caught up with Phair, 56, in late September to talk about what it will be like singing those songs that she wrote a lifetime ago.

What prompted you to take “Exile in Guyville” on the road?

“We were trying to figure what we wanted to do when I was ready to tour after I felt the pandemic had subsided in a way that I was comfortable with. And I watched this album be meaningful for so many years and still be brought back up by fans and make it into really humbling (lists) like Rolling Stone or whatever kind of honorary things it has acquired over the years. And it just felt to me like ... what’s the most important thing I could do with the 30th anniversary? Well, let’s tour ‘Guyville.’ I’ve done it once before, but not this extensively and not this intentionally.”

Your shows are usually just you and the band on a bare stage, but this time you will have more of a stage set up.

“Yes, very meat and potatoes. A very Midwestern approach, but it’s the indie rock thing of ‘we don’t need a lot of cool stuff.’ But this feels special because this album is old and we all know it well. Like, how can we make is special now? And for me that was always about bringing out the story of the romance, which is how I did the song-by-song to (Rolling Stones) ‘Exile on Main St.'"

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What’s it like for you stepping back into your 25-year-old self?

“My 25-year-old self, 24 even. Luckily, I’m writing a book about it at the same time so that helps. I kind of crawl back into a mentality that honestly isn’t that comfortable to wear. You know, the person that I was had a lot of faults, she was insecure a lot. There was the whole injury element that I don’t have in my life now. The darkness for sure, but at the same time making friends with the person that I was and imagining instant bonding when I go on stage at my age is really cool. It’s like the stuff you go to therapy for — integration.”

When you were making “Exile in Guyville,” did you ever imagine you would be touring it 30 years later?

“No! I would be so mad that my job involved performing because I was so (afraid). … But now it has become a place where I feel at home, which is crazy. I think what I would have been most proud of, if I could tell my younger self, was that my art resonated with other people. ... I wouldn’t have believed this is my life but at the same time I would have seen how it could have happened.”

Why does “Exile in Guyville” still resonate, including with today’s young people?

“I was honest about the struggle that women go through when they come out from under the protection of adults and into the world and playground of men and that the world has been largely a male-dominated place. I’m capturing those internal turbulences, that emotional cognitive dissonance in a way of being a young girl and then adulthood and working in the world. And then the other thing is just superficial and funny: I grew up where John Hughes made movies about. I was in high school at the same time that Hughes’s movies were very popular and I really think that Jennifer Grey’s character in ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,’ that was me. You know me; you knew me. I was the annoying sister in ‘Home Alone’... That was me, and when this girl came out with this album that was so raw and kind of punkish, I think you knew me as this girl next door or your sister or your friend.”

Are you excited to go out and perform this album song-by-song?

“I am so excited to play the album because I feel like I will go on an emotional journey and time travel in a way. I’m sure there will be slippage in my mind between am I 25 or am I 56? … It’ll be like a transcendence as opposed to just playing a cool set. There will be an element of psychological lift. The whole audience feeling the same way as they go back to when they first heard it. It’s a really cool concept that we’re all kind of engaging in this nostalgic time travel.”

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