PHIL COOK
(Booking Worldwide outside of EU/UK)
LINEUP:
PHIL COOK (solo project):
Phil Cook - piano
TOUR:
Mar 27, 2025: Knoxville, TN @ Big Ears Festival
Apr 01, 2025: Boston, MA @ The Sinclair
Apr 02, 2025: New York, NY @ LPR
Apr 03, 2025: Washington, D.C. @ The Hamilton
Apr 04, 2025: Baltimore, MD @ Spacebomb
Apr 25, 2025: Traverse City, MI @ The Alluvion
Apr 27, 2025: Milwaukee, WI @ Vivarium
Apr 30, 2025: Minneapolis, MN @ Icehouse MPLS
May 01, 2025: Eau Claire, MI @ The Masonic
May 02, 2025: Evanston, IL @ SPACE
May 03, 2025: Princeton, WI @ The Parlor Hotel
May 09, 2025: La Jolla, CA @ UCSD at The Loft
May 10, 2025: Venice, CA @ Townhouse / Del Monte Speakeasy
May 11, 2025: Los Angeles, CA @ Gold Diggers
May 13, 2025: Mill Valley, CA @ Sweetwater Music Hall
May 14, 2025: Portland, OR @ Mission Theater
May 15, 2025: Seattle, WA @ Fremont Abbey
2025 - Available upon request
2026 - Available upon request
NEW ALBUM:
Phil Cook Announces Appalachia Borealis, New Album Out March 21st, 2025, on Psychic Hotline
A Collection of Deeply Moving Piano Meditations Produced by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon & Inspired by Bird Songs, Bringing a Fresh Start to Phil Cook’s Prolific Solo Career
In the Fall of 2022, Phil Cook suddenly found himself living alone in a small home at the edge of field and forest in North Carolina’s Piedmont. For most of Cook’s four decades, he had resided near the hearts of the midsized Southern cities and Wisconsin towns he had called home, near the groan of traffic and hubbub of coffee shops. Such close quarters helped make the gregarious Cook a prolific collaborator, from cofounding his own Megafaun to working with The Blind Boys of Alabama, Bon Iver, Hiss Golden Messenger, and endless others.
But Cook’s closest neighbor now was a trailhead, his own alleyway into the woods of Orange County. So he went and listened, enraptured first by the stillness and then by the manifold birds. He began leaving his windowsill slightly cracked each night, so that the dawn chorus greeted him each morning. A zealous collector of voice memos, Cook began recording these tangled bird songs. He slowly joined them. With the sun finally high, Cook would listen to the day’s recordings and improvise in real time on the instrument that remains the first and most steadfast love of his musical life, the piano.
Appalachia Borealis—a deeply poignant and personal set of 11 piano meditations, built with the emotional range of a... more
credits
released March 21, 2025
Performed by Phil Cook
Produced by Justin Vernon
Engineered by Joe Richmond
Assisted by Asher Weisberg
Recorded at April Base in Fall Creek, Wisconsin
Mixed by Brian Joseph
Mastered by Kevin Reeves
Lacquer cut by Kevin Gray
All songs by Phil Cook, Guitarheels Music (BMI)
Except “I Made A Lovers Prayer” written by Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Irving Music Inc / Say Uncle Music (BMI), Cracklin’ Music / BUG (BMI)
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