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. The Wine of Youth was nominated Best Americana Album at the San Diego Music Awards.

2022 saw the recording of a fourth album, Goddaughters, "a song cycle with hints of folk, indie and even dream pop, all channeled through cinematic California roots-rock," says Phillips. “As the songs began coalescing, I noticed that they shared the same threads: legacy, transcendence, being in the moment. And I realized, this sounds like a final album. If not my final album, the kind music someone would leave to the world when making a swan song.”

Both Phillips and his wife Gloria Taylor were nominated for 2023 San Diego Music Awards. Phillips was nominated Best Country/Americana Album for Goddaughters, and Taylor in the category of Best Folk/Acoustic Album for her 2022 EP Sun. “We are blown away and did not expect this,” said Phillips. “Even after a decade as San Diego residents, we still have a little SoCal imposter syndrome left in us." Phillips says his album was written to sound like "a final album, a relic of the pandemic to be discovered later as a time-capsule item." Taylor’s EP was inspired by her experience as a sound and energy healer working on Zoom during the pandemic.