![]() 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 called him, and he said he was just about to call me because he had a dream about me. I had a dream about my first cousin, Brian Joseph, who is a mixing engineer. I had some really meaningful phone calls with friends and started to share this journey with people that I’ve known my whole life.Īt some point, all these cosmic things started to happen. I had an incredible spiritual journey there. It had an incredible window overlooking Grandfather Mountain and this big valley.Īlmost every single hour was spent journaling, walking in nature, or playing all day every day, early morning till late at night. I stayed in a place that was built by a musician that had a studio room. Last fall, I wrote an Arts Council grant to go do a writers’ retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains. How did you go from those early morning improvisations to this album? I am still hanging in that balance all these years later. When I discovered piano, I found a balance. ![]() The outside world was a lot for me and I lived in my head quite a lot, and still do. 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. 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. Your relationship with an instrument is an extension of you. I thought about my relationship with the piano and how I wanted to grow in that relationship. I would do a daily meditation, and then I would sit at the piano and improvise before dawn. I got a keyboard and headphones, and I started waking up at six. When I came home, I had these goals in mind. What was it like going back to the piano after years of focusing on other instruments? I knew for like the last four years that I wanted to redo this when I’m 40. He reapproached everything, he wrote his own technique. He informed me that when he was 40, he took a year off to relearn the piano. Bruce is now somebody that I talk to on the phone every other month. He was a big hero of mine, and he was very encouraging. When I was 14, I met Bruce Hornsby at a music festival. 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. So that was not a shock to me and didn’t alter my life or my plans. PHIL COOK: I had already planned to be home in 2020, to take that year off the road. 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.Īhead 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.Ĭook is an expansive storyteller, so this conversation has been edited. That his latest album, All These Years, is entirely introspective piano instrumentals comes as a surprise. Multi-instrumentalist Phil Cook is probably best known for his exuberant playing in groups like Megafaun and Hiss Golden Messenger. Phil Cook: All These Years I Psychic Hotline November 19, 2021
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |