Davis MacLeod Haines
it felt as if phil had come over to my house for tea and asked to play my piano and then whisked me away with absolute melodic bliss. all i could do was smile and let the music take me. supreme music for afternoon daydreams, or for the fresh canvas of a new day.
Favorite track: All These Years.
Charlie Moonbeam
Phil Cook has invited you and your lover into his house, welcomed you to sit on his vintage couch (it’s salvaged from the home he grew up in), and asked you if you wouldn’t mind if he played you some tunes on the piano that he’s been working on.
He hands you hot chocolate and you curl up together under a blanket and savor each sip.
elkdog
Beautiful spacious melodies and gorgeous chord progressions, perfect for listening as the nights draw longer.
Favorite track: Queen Of Branches.
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-old Steinway over a week in the spring of 2021. Piano is where Cook is the most expressive, an easy, free flow of emotional output. "All These Years" feels like starting over, or like a return, trimming everything back to its original starting place.
The church’s cavernous space has long been integral to Cook’s day-to-day life as an artist -- a venue that suggests music as a higher power, and art-making as a form of worship -- a place that elevates the act of writing a song to something beyond sacred. It’s also where Cook’s wife, Heather, worked for years; for his family, it’s like a second home.
The resulting "All These Years" record is near hymn-like, a collection of prayers or meditations, improvisations threaded together by feeling, by the things that matter most. When Cook began these songs, he was in the headspace of meditating on the people in his support network, and those closest to him. Through composing the music, he began to reflect on specific and important presences in his life, and ends up capturing their essence via keys here. He distills decades of friendship, brotherhood, family, love, learning, and loss into flickering piano portraits -- impressionistic and fluid and reverent. It’s not so much looking backwards as it is just looking around, reflections on all that is human and divine and present, and the roads we’ve taken to get us there.
credits
released November 19, 2021
Phil Cook - piano
Produced by Phil Cook and Brian Joseph
Engineered by Brian Joseph
Mixed by Brian Joseph
Mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk
Front cover photo by Shervin Lainez
Back cover photo by Phil Cook
Layout by Will Hackney
supported by 84 fans who also own “All These Years (Expanded Edition)”
Another of our fave hymns that we like to sing at our gatherings.Mr Taylor never fails to deliver, Jesus shot me in the Head indeed.Walk into the light. drbaz
supported by 69 fans who also own “All These Years (Expanded Edition)”
Love all live Hiss, but this one for the rarity cuts. Love how proceeds from all live shows benefit various causes.
Class act and great music = win/win! moo-mabely
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