![]() He distills decades of friendship, brotherhood, family, love, learning, and loss into flickering piano portraits - impressionistic and fluid and reverent. 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. When Cook began these songs, he was in the headspace of meditating on the people in his support network, and those closest to him. 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. It’s also where Cook’s wife, Heather, worked for years for his family, it’s like a second home. ![]() 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. "All These Years" feels like starting over, or like a return, trimming everything back to its original starting place. Phil cook all these years vinyl free#Piano is where Cook is the most expressive, an easy, free flow of emotional output. 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. ![]() Phil cook all these years vinyl full#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. "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). 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. But even across all the work he’s done in his decades as a musician, he’s yet to release a proper piano album. 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. 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. The composition of the record plays as a love letter to Phil’s greatest inspiration of all: People.For Phil Cook, it all started with piano. ![]() He heard Brevan Hampden's distinct sanctified tambourine in his head the whole time he was writing for the sessions. He imagined vocalist Tamisha Waden (Foreign Exchange) soaring above "Steampowered Blues" and turned to collaborator Amelia Meath (Sylvan Esso) to co-write Miles Away. His band The Guitarheels forged a common language touring the world with Cook and he crafted each new song with reverence for each players’ artistic brilliance. Since Southland Mission, Cook has performed with childhood heroes including Mavis Staples, Bruce Hornsby, John Prine, Amy Ray and The Blind Boys of Alabama. Each track asserts that he alone is no greater than the sum of the people who have brought him to this moment. Having only recently stepped to the center of the stage as a solo artist, Cook now takes a moment, citing the power of community as his thesis statement. With the arrival of People Are My Drug, Phil Cook is taking the spark from lights left on by musical heroes and offering a torch for listeners as they navigate their own dark corners. In present times, choosing to amplify community and positivity through art can seem like a radical act. Transforming pain and injustice into love and compassion is a rendering that has been universal to poets and prophets for centuries. ![]()
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