Phil had his first official drum at the age of one and from his earliest memories Phil always considered himself a drummer. Maybe it was a combination of family visits to the Riverwalk in San Antonio, which always involved seeing Bongo Joe. ("Since he was a baby Phil would go into a trance watching him play his drums," recalls Phil’s mom, Olivia), and his sister being in the high school marching band when he was born ("Phil was always mesmerized when the drummers would come out"). Two things were obvious from this, Phil loved to hear drums and he often spaces out.

He started taking his first official lessons at age ten from a Tex-Mex Conjunto drummer and then started classical instruction on snare drum and various mallet percussion at age eleven. Phil is very pleased to have had band directors who allowed him to chuck the sheet music and jazz up percussion parts that were too dull. He loved the dueling nature of band solo contests.

In addition to Bongo Joe & drum lines, his biggest childhood musical influences were side two of the Disney record "Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House", cartoon music, and musical TV variety shows like Hee Haw, Sonny and Cher, the Jim Stafford Show and Tony Orlando and Dawn. Phil went through primary school years playing along with Rush, Led Zeppelin, Jean-Luc Ponty, Jimi Hendrix, Thin Lizzy, Elton John, Black Sabbath, Curtis Mayfield, KISS and Aerosmith. He also played with various rock and roll cover bands (occasionally sneaking in an original song).

Phil moved to Austin for college and was inspired by many of the drummers from local bands like the Big Boys, True Believers, Scratch Acid - all three manned by one of his all time favorite drummers Rey Washam - Zeitgeist/Reivers, Wild Seeds, Texas Instruments and the plethora of powerful, original music being created in Austin. He also became enamored with Keith Moon, George Hurley of the the Minutemen and many of the big band era's Afro-Latin-bop groups like Machito and contemporary African musicians like King Sunny Ade.

His first Austin band was a punk-rock-surf trio called Lucifer Jim (named after the bass player who kept tempting Phil to stay out late instead of going home to study). At this point he also started playing with Chris Burns (of the Pocket Fisherman) in a psychedelic, punk rock, power trio called the Slurpees. Phil then hooked up with some other local musicians to form the WayOuts.

The WayOuts first show was at the famous Liberty Lunch for a battle of the bands, which they won. From then on they became essentially a house band for the club and played shows with many great groups, such as Janes Addiction, Faith No More, the Replacements, Husker-Du, They Might Be Giants, Chris Isaak, John Cale (from the Velvet Underground), Smokey Robinson, The Wonder Stuff, Camper Van Beethoven, The Meat Puppets, 10,000 Maniacs, The Dead Milkmen, Spoon, Kelly Willis, Omar and the Howlers, Joe Ely, Otis Day and The Knights (from Animal House), King's X, Jonathan Richman (who they also backed up musically) and many others. They also toured in a van with Alejandro Escovedo. They signed with the English record label Yellow Moon (formerly Big Time Records) and their album Bite was produced by Phil Vinall (Flock of Seagulls, Mark Knopfler, XTC, Radiohead, Snowpatrol, Elastica, Black Sabbath, Dave Edmunds, Aztec Camera). Their song “What You Want” is the first song on the first episode of the TV show Veronica Mars.

Because, as Phil puts it, he was in the right place at the right time, he has had the pleasure of playing drums behind many great bands and musicians like Alejandro Escovedo, Jonathan Richman, Jean Caffeine, Double O-GO-GO (with Byron Scott of Bad Mutha Goose and Max Brody of Ministry) and the Black and White Years. He recently got back from a month long trip to Spain where he played with 10-string classical guitarist Ignacio Casatejada Cabeza's band Cañamo and Bluses Club and the Madrid power-rock group the Erectones.

Phil joined the Evildoers because he fell in love with their finely crafted power pop and great harmonies. As he put it, "You remind me of Husker Du," and to Phil that is very high praise.