Interview: Phil Cook
“Good luck editing!”
With that winking send-off from Phil Cook, our meandering, quote-rich interview comes to an end.
In just over 44 minutes, the animated multi-instrumentalist covered quite a bit of ground — from recommitting himself to the piano at age 40, to recording his latest album, Appalachia Borealis, with lifelong friend Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), to the “short-speak” collaborative dynamic he shares with his hot-handed producer brother, Brad.
Cook is known primarily as a valued collaborator and co-curator (in a 2019 Rolling Stone interview, he described his longtime role in Hiss Golden Messenger as “a sous chef in the kitchen of Mike Taylor”) whose tasteful contributions have fortified the music of Hurray for the Riff Raff, Nathaniel Rateliff, Waxahatchee, The Blind Boys of Alabama, and many others. He’s also the co-founder of psych-folk collective Megafaun and has released a handful of albums under his name — a mix of meditative instrumentals and Southern gospel/blues-inspired songwriting.
Asheville Stages spoke with Cook about his ever-evolving creative process and musical journey ahead of his seated, Sunday, Nov. 2, show at Eulogy. We needed all the luck we could get paring down the conversation.
Jay Moye: Am I catching you at home?
Phil Cook: You are. It’s a rainy day here in Durham.
JM: Sounds like a great day to play piano.
PC: It is a great day to play piano. It's funny you say that because these last few hours I’ve been setting up my rig with my mics, getting everything ready for the colder-weather months when I can hunker down.
JM: We’re excited to have you back in town Sunday night.
PC: I can’t wait to be back in Asheville, and the fact that I get to reunite with my dear friend William Tyler is just the best icing on the cake.
JM: Indeed, what a talent. Should we expect some overlap in your sets, or would that be giving away too much?
PC: Well, we're both serial collaborators, so we can’t help ourselves.
JM: It’ll just be you and a piano? The last time I saw you here [May 2018 at Ambrose West], it was just you and a few guitars.
PC: It will be just me and a piano, yeah. And you’re right — I did that show with Charlie Parr. I’ve played Asheville since then, at the Double Crown backing up a gospel artist, Thomas Rhyant, whose record I put out on my label, Spiritual Helpline. I love it there. That’s my zone.
JM: Your last two albums are solo piano records. Did All These Years [2021] flow into Appalachia Borealis [2025], or are they siloed in your mind?
PC: They’re connected, for sure. Entering back into piano as a processing mode during [COVID-19 pandemic] quarantine became something I began to lean back on in a big way. Appalachia Borealis became this space where I was able to continue that and add layers of things I was processing by spending deep time in nature with my kids and solo. The piano was very needed, man. My life went through so many changes in the last years, so to have a constant like the piano was something I'm so grateful to have.
JM: You intentionally reconnected with the piano, your first and primary instrument, when you turned 40 [in 2019]. You’ve credited that decision, in part, to Bruce Hornsby?
PC: Indeed. I had a magical chance meeting recording session with my childhood hero in 2018, and we really connected as adults, peers, and fathers. He gave me some really great perspective on his life. We're both nerds to our core, and I love the fact that he decided to relearn piano when he was 40. I took a lot of inspiration from him. We're in a different generation than the fathers of yore who bought red Corvettes and got their ears pierced. We just wanted to learn how to play piano again at 40. [laughs]
JM: A pretty healthy way to navigate a so-called midlife crisis.
PC: Super healthy, and very spiritual. I think life needs resets and returns to center. It’s a continuation of the process of shedding and discovering the beauty nature offers us.
JM: How had your relationship with the piano changed?
PC: That’s a good question. Obviously, it’s a self-dialog; just reacquainting myself with the space that was offered to me during big shifts in my life. Similar to puberty, going to college, and other times of big transition where there's a lot going on, a lot of confusion, inner turmoil, and deep questioning, I returned to a space where the world falls away and I can surrender to meet myself in the moment — with the added perspective of turning 40.
I have a lot of intuition I've developed and honed in my experience on the road, in studios, and on stages for more than half my life. Being a multi-instrumentalist has been a way to realize all the ways I could speak the Romance languages. I'm reverse engineering the Latin in me. This is my primal voice. Whatever I'm going to say, I'm going to say on these instruments, but with this dialect here and this dialect there. I had all this finger-style guitar, Clawhammer banjo, dobro, and slide guitar in my muscle memory, so to have those perspectives, voices, and reflexes while beginning to compose on piano again was powerful.
There's something so beautiful about artists who can, nakedly, vulnerably, and unapologetically walk out and just plug in a guitar into an amp and be like, “This is the tone of me.” To me, that was the act of learning to play piano without using the sustain pedal. I was tipped to it in a lesson when my teacher urged me to discover how I really sound by removing that crutch, which is like a reverb pedal. It blends everything together but limits a lot of the dynamics and punctuation a piano can offer. The multiplicity of a piano means I have 10 fingers and all these keys I can make sing out.
So much more intention comes in now. I have more control over orchestration and arrangement. Everything can be a distinct voice. Unadorned melody notes that sing on top of what’s fluttering underneath unlock a massive field of possibility. I took off and felt like when I was a kid, growing up and hearing Sly Stone and Herbie Hancock, and Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett and James Booker, for the first time. It was great to find something like that again by returning to center on piano, simply through the act of eliminating something so fundamental right in front of my face. Our liberation is in our limitations.
JM: Especially for non-piano players, it can sound like a minor thing to lay off the sustain pedal. But it’s clear it was an enlightening decision that yielded big results. Almost like learning a new instrument?
PC: Yeah. It really does feel like a new instrument all over again. And, what’s cool is that in a recording situation, there were years where my brother, Brad, was like, “Can you not play the sustain pedal? It’s putting so much into the air of the recording where the notes are. Can we just shrink the sound?” And I’d do it, reluctantly, but I didn't have the skill set I have for it now. Now I don't need or want a sustain pedal on any piano, any Wurlitzer, any [Fender] Rhodes I play.
JM: You wrote your last two records while sequestered in remote areas. Is that an important part of your process, to separate yourself from your day-to-day living environment?
PC: It really helps me. I'm sitting on the couch in my house right now. My dog is here, and he needs a bath. I have blankets still out from movie night last night. I just folded some laundry I need to put away. I'm surrounded by things that grab and need my attention, which takes away from my capacity. Discipline is hard for me, so I need to set a deadline, and sometimes that means sequestering myself away somewhere.
I really need to create the space to turn it on and surrender myself fully. Once I do, things always just start flowing. Something unlocks, and my gears really start turning. It’s almost like a meditation retreat where my body gets in sync with this other rhythm and a circadian thing happens with the music.
JM: Birdsongs were a major sonic inspiration for Appalachia Borealis, while you were isolated in an Orange County cabin. Can you speak to that, and why being surrounded by the sounds and feeling of nature lends itself to your songwriting?
PC: When I play piano, the world falls away. When I'm in nature, I fall away. The experience of being in nature subsides the ego. With all the rhythms happening around me, I return to a space where I can actually think and make decisions. [When writing Appalachia Borealis], I began to have these wonderful curiosities develop with beautiful tones, textures, and melodies coming from bird calls. I started to have this relationship with a northern mockingbird. Each can record and mimic up to 200 sounds, and they have their own individual reels they can regurgitate and utilize for mating or defense. I love mimicking voices and sounds around me, so I felt like I wanted to honor that journey of discovering that with myself.
Every time I’d hear a mockingbird, I’d record it on my phone. I got into finding what key each sound was in, then listening on a loop in my headphones and improvising on my keyboard. I started to realize I don't have to go away for 10 days. I can be in the woods where the world falls away in my head and compose with immediacy. Everything gets out of the way and the music just lives.
JM: You then took a batch of songs up to Wisconsin to record with Justin [Vernon]. What was your brief to him as producer?
PC: With solo piano, for all intents and purposes, you're capturing a performance. Headspace is everything. To have an environment where I could really surrender and go there was paramount. I have to work with people who truly know me as a musician in a particular moment. Not a lot of people fall in that category, but Justin does. He’s family. We grew up together and taught each other how to play music. He's championed me forever and always been in my corner.
What I needed from him was to basically just sit and listen. I wanted him to take notes when he saw me really being myself, in moments that stood out. I was improvising, doing takes, and he was marking time throughout. Over two days, he made a greatest hits list of about 20 takes from 100 recordings, which we narrowed down to the ones that are on the record. It was the best recording experience I've ever had. I recorded from lunch until dinner, which was so easy and chill and seamless. We had so much time to just be relaxed and enjoy each other as friends.
JM: I’d imagine it was an interesting creative challenge for him to engineer an instrumental piano record — not something you’d naturally associate with the Bon Iver universe.
PC: Absolutely. I think he was excited to have a clear, concise, three-day ask from an old friend where we could be free to just be ourselves. And his studio, where I’ve made so many records over the last 20 years, had been completely revamped. So, it was a beautiful reintroduction for me.
JM: You referred to yourself as “a serial collaborator” earlier. You’ve been a go-to sideman on stage and in studio as far more than a player. How does that complementary role serve you as an artist who also makes music on his own?
PC: I have my own private journey with music that began in my formative years. My first application was joining a group in high school that met at a jazz camp. Justin was the singer. That was my first band I really played in and learned how to apply my love of music into a group setting. He and I have continued to play together literally for 30 years straight, in different projects.
Being the first mate became my main expression mode because I know how the ship works. I know arrangement and texture and orchestration. I can be the liaison between musicians that come in and are learned and studied and have sheet music. I can do theory and I can play by ear. I'm a utilitarian in many ways, which is a very natural role for me to play. I almost prefer it that way because I don't have to carry all the weight. I get to just do me, super hard, for somebody.
For example, the experience of making William Tyler’s Modern Country record at April Base [Vernon’s studio] was so much fun, looking around a circle of wonderful people I respect and love so much [including Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche and Tweedy bassist Darin Gray]. To make something that serves William’s music, as honestly as I could, made me so happy. That's who I am as a friend. Support is great, man.
Similarly, in 2019, I arrived in Vancouver on tour with Hiss [Golden Messenger]. We had a few days off, so I had the chance to spend time with my dear friend, Frazey Ford, who was in the middle of tracking her record, U Kin B the Sun. I spent Canadian Thanksgiving up there, jumping to the studio with her for two hours here and there. I did from-the-gut, first-take passes at every track on her record, on keys. And holy shit, man, it was so much fun. The idea of being able to just show up and be there with a friend and artist I really treasure and use my instincts to the best of their ability, that's just the best. That's the ideal for me, as a musician. It embodies all of what I love about what I do and why, for some reason, I'm still doing this after all these years.
JM: Speaking of collaborators, how would you describe your creative relationship with your brother these days?
PC: We have a real short-speak when we're in the studio together. He lives only a mile away, so it takes no time for me to duck over. He records all of his records at his house, which is his preferred mode. It’s great because it’s very low-key. I’ll get a call saying, “Hey, can you come over tomorrow after lunch? So-and-so's in town, and we need keys on two to five songs.” I’ll pop over and be out of there by 3 p.m. It's very in and out, for the most part, which is great because we’re both going about our lives.
Next Friday [Nov. 7], the new Mavis Staples record [Beautiful Strangers] comes out, which my brother produced. I'm really excited for everyone to hear that one. That was the hardest and longest I've seen Brad work on something. He threw his whole body, heart, and soul into shepherding that record. It required many sessions over the course of a year or two. At the very end, there were these little moments while adding finishing touches where we were both like, “Wow, it’s amazing that this is where we're at.”
The last place Justin, Brad, and I lived together in Wisconsin, we had a record player in our living room. We had this Vee-Jay [Records] Staple Singers comp we’d put on every Sunday morning. It was our Sunday morning thing. So, it goes all the way back.
JM: That's pretty full-circle.
PC: You gotta pinch yourself sometimes.
JM: You appeared recently on the Mel Robbins podcast to talk about the power of creativity. No big deal! How’d that come together, and what message did you hope to land in that interview?
PC: Everything I’ve been able to enjoy in music, opportunity-wise, has come from building and sustaining relationships, organically, over time. I've never clicked on a LinkedIN profile or really tried to network in LA or New York. I’ve worked with a friend I met at Newport [Folk Festival] for 15 years who’s close friends with the Robbins family. Their daughter, Kendall Robbins, is an immensely talented rising artist. I met her when she was fresh out of music school in LA, before she put out her first single. I think the world of her. She’s got so much talent and has such a good head on her shoulders.
I met Mel when Kendall and I both performed at Carnegie Hall last year. My mom and dad were there, and I’d brought these gospel artists from Buffalo I was producing, and we all ended up hanging together. Halfway through breakfast, my mom all of a sudden realized who Mel was. [laughs]
Her team reached out to me to be on the podcast. I was super flattered and surprised, because I’m not a world-leading researcher or expert like the people she usually has on. But I have spent my whole life in a creative processing mode and in creative community. And what I value about that is real. When you live a creative and artistic life, you're offered a chance at a different set of values. I absolutely love the people I've been able to meet, the places I’ve been able to go, and the way those relationships have helped me see so many paths of human vulnerability, fallibility, courage, and earnest want and need for connection and expression.
I have way too many stories in my heart and head to become cynical. And that's what I seek out and try to put out in the world: synchronicities and magnetism. I trust that music will put me on a pathway with other harmonious frequencies. I don’t question it; I know it's there. I hope my appearance on the podcast was accessible. I hope people listen to it and feel like I'm just a guy living month to month, on one level, but on another level I really love who I am and who I've become. And I love the people in my life.
IF YOU GO
Who: Phil Cook with William Tyler (seated show)
When: Sunday, Nov. 2, 8 p.m.
Where: Eulogy, 10 Buxton Ave., burialbeer.com/pages/eulogy
Tickets: $32.51
(Photo by Graham Tolbert)
