100 days · Sep 23 → Dec 31, 2026
Phil Cook's opening track from Appalachia Borealis, learned at the piano fifteen minutes a day, from September 23 to New Year's Eve.
at the piano missed today every tenth day, a take: recorded and posted below
Fifteen minutes a day at the piano, plinking through the chords until my hands know where they go. Sit down, play it slowly, get up. That is the whole discipline.
Every tenth day I record it, however it sounds, and post the take here. Ten takes by New Year's. Posting is the point: a missed day on a public grid is harder to shrug off than one in a notebook.
The method comes from my friend Matt Hepburn, a musician. Learn the bass, the chords and the melody separately, eight bars at a time, slowed down, then bring the tempo up and put the parts together. By January the goal is to play the whole thing through without stopping, not to play it well. Well can take the rest of the year.
Rise opens Appalachia Borealis, the solo piano record Phil Cook released in March 2025: eleven pieces, thirty-one minutes, most of them begun at a window in North Carolina with the birds going outside. It is quiet and patient and it moves like breathing.
I am learning to play again, as an adult, and this is the piece that made me want to. It is simple enough that fifteen minutes a day can get somewhere, and rich enough that getting somewhere will take a while. I would rather learn one song I love all the way down than a dozen I am indifferent to.
Phil Cook grew up in Wisconsin's Chippewa Valley and came up through DeYarmond Edison with his brother Brad and Justin Vernon, then Megafaun, then a long run playing behind other people: Hiss Golden Messenger, Bon Iver, Mavis Staples, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Anaïs Mitchell, Waxahatchee. He lives in North Carolina. He did not own a piano of his own until a couple of years ago, a used one off Craigslist.
Appalachia Borealis began as voice memos of birdsong from his window and improvisations to go with them. Justin Vernon produced it at April Base in the Chippewa Valley in April 2024, with the microphones close enough to catch the chair and the breathing. During the mix, cardinals outside the studio in Eau Claire sang when the music played and stopped when it stopped. They are on the record.
What I admire is not the résumé. He plays like someone listening more than performing, and every note has room around it. By every account he is a thoughtful and caring person, and the sensitivity in his piano playing is exceptional. That is reason enough to give a hundred days to one of his songs.