PHIL COOK
(Booking Worldwide outside of EU/UK)
LINEUP:
PHIL COOK (solo project):
Phil Cook - piano
TOUR:
2024 - Available upon request
2025 - Available upon request
LATEST ALBUM:
ALL THESE YEARS (EXPANDED EDITION) RELEASED NOV 2021 ON PSYCHIC HOTLINE.
For Phil Cook, it all started with piano. A prolific songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, solo artist, and in-demand musician whose collaborations have run the gamut of genre -- as a founding member of beloved band Megafaun to work with The Blind Boys of Alabama, Bon Iver, Kanye West, and Hiss Golden Messenger, to name a few -- Cook has always been a musician’s musician. A sweet and affable presence whose musical dexterity elevates every project he touches, Cook’s musical output and true sound has been hard to pin down. But even across all the work he’s done in his decades as a musician, he’s yet to release a proper piano album. In that way, "All These Years" is sort of the first proper introduction to Cook, to the way he can express himself with the most ease and reveal the deepest compartments of his heart.
"All These Years" is Cook’s first solo instrumental album on his primary instrument, recorded at NorthStar Church of the Arts in Durham, NC by his cousin and collaborator Brian Joseph (Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, Indigo Girls). Cook and Joseph have been close their entire lives, with Joseph being one of the people who knows the full depth of Cook’s relationship to the instrument. These ten pieces came to life on a long-cared-for and much-loved one-hundred year... more
VIDEOS:
BIO:
You already know Phil Cook, at least if you’ve listened to any of the most essential folk-rock, indie rock, or even gospel records of the last decade. The spirited piano solo on Hiss Golden Messenger’s “Day O Day,” the incisive melody of Bon Iver’s “AUTAC,” the mesmerizing elegance of the keys on Hurray for the Riff Raff’s “Life on Earth”—yes, those are all Phil Cook, a beloved collaborator capable of transforming an entire song with a pretty lick here, a sharp line there. The War on Drugs, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Ani DiFranco, Nathaniel Rateliff, Frazey Ford, the Indigo Girls: Cook’s partnerships in just the last dozen years shape their own best-of.
But now, Phil Cook has returned to his first musical love: solo piano. It is, after all, the instrument of his upbringing and now the most direct line between his fathoms-deep sensitivity and the ears of his audience. On the new release, All These Years, Cook’s playing—a chronicle of gorgeous and emotionally expansive meditations—reorients expectations of solo piano composition and improvisation. Indeed, that exquisite album is just the start for a player approaching the grand old instrument from the perhaps unlikely foundation of American folk music.
Two decades ago, Cook left his native Wisconsin for North Carolina, largely to be closer to the American roots music that had taken over his life. The blues, bluegrass, old-time, country: They formed a composite lingua franca for Cook, who began to deliver his keen understanding of these sounds with a guitar or a banjo, a slide or fingerpicks. He funneled that information into his pioneering avant-folk band Megafaun and subsequent duties as an in-demand sideman. But in early 2020, Cook paused his relentless touring duties with others, intent on focusing on how all his experiences and erudition could fit into his own songs. He found a cabin in the North Carolina mountains and woke early and wrote late, penning aubades and nocturnes and endearing reflections on his own life. The results feel like a mirror held to a heart and mind squinting to find light in our age of darkness, hope in a moment where it’s easier to believe in its absence.
Traditional folk music, we are rightly told, was often the sound of people getting by, of chronicling despair and worry so that they might get through that stuff, if only for the next five minutes. Technique and melody and vocabulary aside, that is the absolute essence Phil Cook summons at the piano, whether supporting some famous singer or offering the warm flicker of his solo work. This is music that makes you glad to have heard it, glad that it exists, glad that you’re here with the chance to be glad at all.
— Grayson Haver Currin (2022)
PRESS:
PRAISE FOR PHIL COOK
“Did you ever wish there was a piano in your house and you had a lover who sat down and played beautiful extemporaneous etudes to fill your days and provide a soundtrack to quiet moments and thoughts? Put on this record and experience what might otherwise be the singular pleasure of Mz. Phil Cook.”
—Ani DiFranco
“Phil Cook is a lighting bolt. He is a teacher and captor of music. He carries it within him at all times. No one has taught me more about music in my life than him. He is one of the great performers of our age ... as time passes more and more people will find that out. I'm excited every time someone gets to discover Phil’s genius—a thing I've had the good fortune of knowing all my life. Here’s the thing, he does it all: his piano records, his guitar playing, his abilities are endless.”
—Justin Vernon, Bon Iver
“Phil Cook has been making great records in different guises for a long time, but 'All These Years' is a newborn splendor. It’s wise and tender and deeply lyrical in the absence of lyrics, has an undeniably inspired flow. It’s become a huge record in our house, I joke that it is edging out Vince Guaraldi, it’s music to live life to.”
—Anaïs Mitchell
“Phil Cook exudes joy … he has a genetic memory for every person who's ever lived and played music and he's so happy about it … Phil is always in the trenches, doing this work because he's the everyman of players. He's a populist, like Woody Guthrie.”
—Amy Ray, Indigo Girls
PRESS FOR PHIL COOK
Pitchfork: All These Years | 7.2
On these solo piano performances, the musician known for his work with Justin Vernon, Hiss Golden Messenger, and more suggests that peaceful solitude can offer its own high.
INDY Week
Phil Cook Dedicated His 40th Year to the Piano—and Manifested All These Years
Aquarium Drunkard
Phil Cook :: Finding The Purity In Music
The New York Times
Stay Prayed Up Review: Spreading the Gospel of Love