THE FLYBY PHIL STORY
Flyby Phil's CD: 'Hello Wall!'

It all started when a Solano Community College (California) physics and astronomy teacher and guitar picker watched the movie, ‘The Fast and the Furious’. It reminded him of the first and only fast car he ever owned--a 1960 Chevy Impala convertible with 343 horses—and awakened a compulsive ‘need for speed’.

Phil Petersen got on the road to the fulfillment of this need when his fiancé, Nancy, invited him to the local dirt track, the Antioch Speedway, to watch her daughter race.  Melissa Hansen drove car #33 and was the stock car champion the previous year. The next year she earned rookie of the year in superstocks, but for Phil it was fuel for the fire which would make him an all-round racing fan. Whether it was modifieds on dirt or Nascar on pavement, he watched it all and was absorbed into the soul of racing.

In the sixties and seventies, Phil was a guitar teacher and wrote hundreds of songs, even did some recording, but he had never found the theme to carry him into a full musical career. However, after two years of being a racing fan, getting into racing video games, talking to drivers, he began to feel what it was like to be a race car driver.

Besides, Phil became a racing champion in his own right, working his way ‘From Dirt To Daytona’ on the so-named video game, winning the Nascar championship at 105%, the greatest difficulty. He then went on to win a full Nextel Cup Series at the challenging legend difficulty on the Nascar Race For The Cup 2005 video game.

The feelings generated by these experiences translated themselves into heartfelt songs embodying the racing spirit.  In fact, ‘Hello Wall’, the headlining song, was written for the announcers at Antioch who shout it out when racers skid into the barriers.  The stockcar champion Melissa suggested a few of the themes for the songs, and another stock car driver, Tim Welence, wrote a funky verse to ’Rubbin’ is Racin’.

One night, Phil was at the Antioch Raceway and was thinking of all the nicknames drivers got because of their driving personalities. He decided that since he was flying by dozens of racecars in videogames, he would call himself ‘Flyby Phil’.  Thus the legend begins.