Zach Phillips moved to California from Chicago to pursue his work at NAMM in 2012. After a 13-year hiatus from performing and recording, a new album called The Wine of Youth was released in 2020. An homage to California, it features such tracks as “Hey, San Diego,” “Doesn’t Feel Like California” and “Cascadia,” celebrating the state’s jagged beauty, indomitable spirit and primal intensity. The video for the first track to be released, “Ladybird,” received 3,500 YouTube views in its first three days of being posted. Phillips recorded the album during the summer and early fall of 2019 at producer Gregg Montante’s San Diego home studio.