I think I stumbled upon Phil Cook while exploring songs for my Instrumentical playlist. His solo piano album All These Years from 2021 is gorgeous; I was even more impressed when I realised he’d also released a solo guitar album and was a blues, americana and gospel singer-songwriter.
My research about Mr Cook for this post discovered that I had listened to his amazing playing without realising – he played on many songs by artists that I follow like Hiss Golden Messenger, Caamp, Mountain Goats, Bon Iver and Nathaniel Rateliffe. We will get into HGM in a future post as I was completely obsessed with his 2019 album Terms of Surrender. Today though, it’s all about ‘Gone’, taken from 2015’s Southland Mission.
I love a simple start to a song that then builds up the dynamics incrementally. We being with a banjo and voice with the lyric:
There’s an old man at the table
And his shadow’s growing thin
Though he can’t see where he’s going
And it’s fading where he’s been
The simplicity continues through the chorus with its catchy as hell repetition of “Had it all” and then the crux of the song “When it’s gone, then it’s gone, boy it’s gone”. Only then does the guitar come in followed by a warm bass drum and some gorgeous backing vocals.
There are no lyrics to this song on the internet. I think this is because at the end of the second verse, no one can decipher what Phil is singing. It sounds like French to me but I have no idea.
Once we hit the end of the second chorus some electric piano has snuck in with some bass, a perfect bed of sound, so well mixed I struggle to pull it apart. There’s now a guitar solo and a tambourine appears.
The drop-down verse brings the electric piano to the forefront and then we’re building up again with the banjo – but a violin has appeared out of nowhere, making its presence well known at the end of the chorus. The bass also becomes some funky thing with some handclaps. It’s a delight for the ears and a valuable lesson for me as a songwriter. It seems revolutionary to bring in an instrument 2/3rds through a song and let it take a leading role. But it works so well and stops you from getting bored with the instrumentation. I guess it shows how much I still have to learn!
The lyrics are simple, again a reminder that good songs don’t have to be a truth-telling, life-affirming word fest. That is not to say that the song doesn’t have meaning. I think the message about life being fleeting is a relatable one. The final chorus reminds us to ‘Bet it all’ i.e. go all in on life because when it’s gone, it’s not coming back. My recent musical experiences have taught me that I must go all in on myself, believe in my abilities, and give myself to the moments where the only thing that matters is singing.
The rest of Southland Mission is worth a listen to, with ‘Lowly Road’, gospel-inspired dripping with gorgeous vocals and the song ‘Anybody Else’.