After leaving Utah in the late 1960s, he went to Saratoga Springs, New York, where he was befriended by the folk community at the Caffè Lena coffee house. Sorrels started playing the songs that Phillips wrote, and through her his music began to spread. Phillips met folk singer Rosalie Sorrels in the early 1950s, and remained a close friend of hers. Utah Phillips in keeping with the hobo tradition of adopting a moniker that included an initial and the state of origin, and in emulation of country vocalist T. He also ran for president of the United States in 1976 for the Do-Nothing Party. He received 2,019 votes (0.5%) in an election won by Republican Wallace F. Senate as a candidate of Utah's Peace and Freedom Party in 1968.
Phillips worked at the Joe Hill House for the next eight years, then ran for the U.S. Phillips assisted him in establishing a mission house of hospitality named after the activist Joe Hill. He gave credit to Hennacy for saving him from a life of drifting to one dedicated to using his gifts and talents toward activism and public service. While riding the rails and tramping around the west, Phillips returned to Salt Lake City, where he met Ammon Hennacy from the Catholic Worker Movement. After discharge from the army, Phillips rode the railroads, and wrote songs. Witnessing the devastation of post-war Korea greatly influenced his social and political thinking. He served in the United States Army for three years in the 1950s. Phillips attended East High School in Salt Lake City, where he was involved in the arts and plays. Phillips attributes his early exposure to vaudeville through his stepfather as being an important influence on his later career. Cohen moved the family to Salt Lake City, Utah, where he managed the Lyric Theater, another vaudeville house. Phillips was adopted at the age of five by his stepfather, Syd Cohen, who managed the Hippodrome Theater in Cleveland, one of the last vaudeville houses in the city. His parents divorced and his mother remarried. Phillips was a card-carrying member of the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) headquartered in Chicago. His father, Edwin Phillips, was a labor organizer, and his parents' activism influenced much of his life's work. Phillips was born in Cleveland to Edwin Deroger Phillips and Frances Kathleen Coates.