Glen Phillips ‘looking toward the light’ on post-divorce album

Glen Phillips has a serious piece of advice for anyone who’s looking to start a band: All the members need to have a side project.

“I think it’s imperative that people have other outlets,” Phillips said. “If you get too deep into it, you can easily lose your perspective and start thinking you don’t have choices. And that’s really dangerous for bands. … There are hierarchies in bands, and I have been in the position of pretending there aren’t and it’s a great way to foster resentment.”

The singer-songwriter has recorded and toured as a solo artist since his popular band Toad the Wet Sprocket took a break in the late ’90s before regrouping a few years later. Phillips performs at the Bartlett on Saturday, playing an acoustic show that highlights selections from his long career.

“I play a few Toad songs, and I feel I honor those songs,” Phillips said. “They’re songs I wrote and am very proud of. But the emphasis is on the last 15 years of work I’ve done, which is more relevant to me.”

Phillips founded Toad the Wet Sprocket when he was a teenager in 1980s Santa Barbara, California, and the band took over alt-rock radio in the early ’90s with hits like “All I Want” and “Walk on the Ocean.” The band still has a devoted following, and it released an LP in 2013 and an EP in 2015.

Phillips’ latest release, “Swallowed by the New,” is his first solo studio album in a decade. The songs were written following his divorce, and he describes it as an album of dawning idealism.

“It started out as songs about the end of my marriage and ended up as songs about waking up for life and not going dormant when big changes happen,” Phillips said. “I wanted it to have optimism at its core. I wanted it to be looking toward the light instead of getting stuck in the darkness, because I have a tendency to get lost there.”

Phillips is traveling with friend and fellow musician Jonathan Kingham, who will open Saturday’s show and will back up Phillips during some of his set. Phillips describes touring with Toad the Wet Sprocket as a “paid vacation.” There are drivers and managers and guitar techs to keep everything running smoothly. Being on the road as a solo act, on the other hand, is a more DIY operation.

“I like that I get to see all the sides of it,” Phillips said. “It’s easy to take stuff for granted.”

Toad the Wet Sprocket has been regularly performing since it reunited in 2006 – the band last played Spokane in 2014 – though Phillips says a new Toad LP isn’t anything he’s thinking about right now. The band isn’t going anywhere, however, and Phillips recognizes that audiences keep coming to Toad concerts because of the nostalgia they inspire.

“It’s about a time in their lives and what these songs did for them then,” Phillips said. “We were a popular band when they were in college, and their memory and identity is linked to the music they cared about then. … It’s comfort food. (Our job) is to put a blanket around their shoulders. That’s what Toad is. And that’s a great job to have.”

But it’s important, Phillips says, for musicians to maintain artistic identities that are separate from their bands.

“I like taking people on that journey, and I like the fact that I have an audience that’s smaller but they listen,” he said. “I want an audience who’s going to hear a new song and who’s going to lean forward and take in every word of it.”