Phil Bono was born in Paterson, NJ.
In the eighties, as frontman and principal songwriter for The Sharkskins, he toured extensively throughout the eastern U.S., releasing a now out-of-print EP on Killjoy Records. He has since recorded and performed with a wide variety of artists and songwriters ranging from Nine Inch Nails keyboardist Charlie Clouser to Television/Matthew Sweet guitarist Richard Lloyd, to songwriter Bobby Hart, composer of many of the Monkees’ chart-toppers.
In 1991 he formed ghost shirt society as an outlet for the stockpile of globally-conscious material he’d been writing, taking the name from the secret revolutionary society in the classic Kurt Vonnegut novel Player Piano whose plot to overthrow an autocratic technocracy of the future is ultimately doomed, and in memory of the multitudes of Native Americans who were slaughtered in the hysteria resulting from the Ghost Dance movement of the late eighteenth century.
Currently, ghost shirt society can be heard performing in select West Coast venues or in the studio, putting the finishing touches on their new CD.