Phil Cook: All These Years I Psychic Hotline; November 19, 2021

Multi-instrumentalist Phil Cook is probably best known for his exuberant playing in groups like Megafaun and Hiss Golden Messenger. That his latest album, All These Years, is entirely introspective piano instrumentals comes as a surprise. But for Cook, it makes intuitive sense: it’s a way to reconnect with the expressive potential of his primary instrument while also expanding on the personal connections that bring him meaning.

Ahead of the album release, the INDY caught up with Cook in his home studio in Durham, where he interspersed his thoughts with little bits of the songs from the record.

Cook is an expansive storyteller, so this conversation has been edited.

INDY WEEK: Why a piano album now?

PHIL COOK: I had already planned to be home in 2020, to take that year off the road. So that was not a shock to me and didn’t alter my life or my plans. When I arrived back home, I was freshly 40 years old and I decided for my 40th year that I would rededicate that year to the piano, which was my first and main instrument.

When I was 14, I met Bruce Hornsby at a music festival. He was a big hero of mine, and he was very encouraging. Bruce is now somebody that I talk to on the phone every other month. He informed me that when he was 40, he took a year off to relearn the piano. He reapproached everything, he wrote his own technique. I knew for like the last four years that I wanted to redo this when I’m 40.

What was it like going back to the piano after years of focusing on other instruments?

When I came home, I had these goals in mind. I got a keyboard and headphones, and I started waking up at six. I would do a daily meditation, and then I would sit at the piano and improvise before dawn. I thought about my relationship with the piano and how I wanted to grow in that relationship. Your relationship with an instrument is an extension of you.

It was a way to kind of have an inner dialogue while I was taking in all this information and all these layers from the outside world—my home, my marriage, my kids, my community, my neighborhood, and then we’re going broad field into society. The world is still even more overwhelming of a place when you’re an adult then sometimes it can be when you’re a kid.

I was a kid who was very sensitive. The outside world was a lot for me and I lived in my head quite a lot, and still do. When I discovered piano, I found a balance. I am still hanging in that balance all these years later.

How did you go from those early morning improvisations to this album?

Last fall, I wrote an Arts Council grant to go do a writers’ retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I stayed in a place that was built by a musician that had a studio room. It had an incredible window overlooking Grandfather Mountain and this big valley.

Almost every single hour was spent journaling, walking in nature, or playing all day every day, early morning till late at night. I had an incredible spiritual journey there. I had some really meaningful phone calls with friends and started to share this journey with people that I’ve known my whole life.

At some point, all these cosmic things started to happen. I had a dream about my first cousin, Brian Joseph, who is a mixing engineer. We’ve always been really close. I called him, and he said he was just about to call me because he had a dream about me. I said, “I think I want to make this piano record with you.” He laughed so hard and said, “That’s what I was calling you to tell you. I want to make a piano record with you!”

This record is about space. When I started to spend time with my cousin—I did two weeks of pre-production in his studio in Wisconsin—what we were doing was cultivating this space between us. He had recently survived cancer and was going through a divorce. We both were using each other to process inner questions in our story, walking and talking and just leaning on each other.

It’s also about this sacred space in downtown Durham, NorthStar Church of the Arts, where my wife worked for a long time. They had just gotten this Steinway L from 1923. When I went to that piano, I hit a note and it was like immediately my heart opened as soon as I played it. I called Brian and said, “We’ve got to do the record here.”

When you were recording the album, did you have the songs already composed?

There’s so much spontaneity and trust and openness on the record. I think four of the songs were compositions and the other ones are all improvisations. None of the songs are technically difficult. I call it “hymn-provisation” because it is spiritual but also the songs feel like hymns and prayers to me.

At Brian’s house, there was this creaky, 100-year-old upright piano that had duct tape on the hammers. One day, I went to the piano when we were having lunch and I hit this note. It sounded so broken, and the song “Brothers” just came out. It was immediately followed by “Bicycle Song.” Both songs came out that lunchtime and I recorded them as I wrote them.

At NorthStar, I was playing “Bicycle Song,” and I fucked up. As soon as it happened, I let go and just started farting around and I didn’t think anything of it.

As soon as I let go, the spirit of the song leapt out. I keep that song, mistake and all, because it’s the spark moment of that song and it releases after that. I was in an unfettered zone that’s just so free and liberating. It was a little cosmic lesson and a tap on the fanny for me.

This space that we cultivated over the year has been an act of me getting out of my own way and having it not be about anything other than what needed to come through in a moment. That isn’t me that’s coming through. I can’t even take credit for it. There’s just so much divine, cosmic beauty, and meaning in that entire experience. 

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