Posts Tagged ‘ Phil Cook ’

Hiss Golden Messenger – November 15, 2016 Music Hall of Williamsburg

November 20, 2016
By

Hiss Golden Messenger

Hiss Golden Messenger’s new album, Heart Like a Levee, is one for dark times—and dark times we’ve got in abundance. Still, last week’s tour stop at the Music Hall of Williamsburg was nothing if not uplifting. “Red Rose Nantahala,” normally dedicated to North Carolina’s horrid (and hopefully former) governor, is here dedicated to “a whole bunch of people,” and I think the whole room here in Brooklyn more than ever felt the import of those lyrics, “Well let me be the one I want / Well let me love the one I want.” On the lighter side, it was the band’s cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Brown-Eyed Women” that stole the show. Their version appeared originally on the Day of the Dead compilation and this was apparently the first time it had been attempted live. The epic, thirteen-minute closer “Brother, Do You Know the Road?” (a personal favorite among HGM tunes), fittingly performed to end a set of songs about finding your way home, and on one of the last dates of their tour, will send you off feeling pretty good.

I recorded this set with the mics set up at the soundboard combined with a board feed from the band’s touring engineer, Luke. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!

Download: MP3/FLAC

Stream:

Hiss Golden Messenger
2016-11-15
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Brooklyn, NY

Recorded and produced by Eric PH for nyctaper.com

Soundboard [engineer: Luke] + AKG C480B/CK63 (DFC, PAS, at SBD) > Roland R-26 > 2xWAV (24/48) > Adobe Audition CC (align, compression, mixdown, normalize, fades) + Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ) > Audacity 2.0.5 (downsample, dither, tracking, tagging) > FLAC (16/44.1, level 8)

Tracks [2:07:11]
01. As the Crow Flies
02. Biloxi
03. Saturday’s Song
04. Mahogany Dread
05. Red Rose Nantahala
06. Day O Day (A Love So Free)
07. [banter]
08. Heart Like a Levee
09. Tell Her I’m Just Dancing
10. O Happy Day
11. Like a Mirror Loves a Hammer
12. Call Him Daylight
13. I’ve Got a Name For the Newborn Child
14. [banter]
15. I’m a Raven (Shake Children)
16. [banter]
17. O Little Light
18. Flags and Banners [Faces]
19. Say It Like You Mean It
20. Cracked Windshield
21. Lucia
22. Southern Grammar
23. [encore break]
24. Brown-Eyed Women [Grateful Dead]
25. Brother, Do You Know the Road?

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SHOW YOUR SUPPORT by buying Hiss Golden Messenger’s records from Paradise of Bachelors and Merge Records, as well as HGM’s online store.

Phil Cook: September 23, 2015 Rough Trade NYC + September 10, 2015 Hopscotch Music Festival (Raleigh, NC) – FLAC/MP3/Streaming

October 7, 2015
By

hopscotch-festival-2015-31kennethbachor
[Hopscotch photo courtesy of Kenneth Bachor]

Phil Cook is a very easy person to like. If there’s a musician — or heck, a human in general — who is more affable, good-hearted and filled with positivity, I have yet to see them. Cook has been the dutiful bassist, the cheerful sidekick, the go-to-guy for a slew of bands, including Megafaun, with his brother Brad, Hiss Golden Messenger, Akron/Family, Gayngs, and DeYarmond Edison. As Phil pointed out himself, he’s had a long career of doing what other people told him — showing up on time, hitting the right notes, being a get-along guy. The new album Southland Mission represents his first foray into the world of the frontman. The microphone is his now, and the shots are his to call. So he’s assembled an eight-piece band, complete with backup singers, bass, second guitar, and keys, and he’s the one who decides when practice is, where to go, what to do. Suffice it say, most of us would be lucky to have such a genial boss. Southland Mission wears its influences on its sleeve — much as Cook literally wore a Staples Singers shirt this night — and Cook’s devotion to the gospel, soul, R&B and blues music of an earlier era is both obvious and genuine. “Lowly Road” offers a gospel-style chorus, while the loping blues of “Sitting On A Fence” could’ve come from Chicago in the 1960s.

These sets followed a relatively similar course, though with somewhat different vibes. The first, at Hopscotch, came on the day before the release of Southland Mission, and was the first time that Cook played the material in public, together with his band The Guitarheels. Staged in the grand Fletcher Opera Theater, with a band banner at his back (along with an inappropriately large ad for festival sponsor Mini), the setting felt appropriate to the moment. Packed with a fawning hometown crowd, Cook’s material was greeted at every step with roars and encouraging shouts from people he probably sees at the same shows every night (I had to reduce between-song volume to account for it, but trust me). When the band kicked off with one of the album’s most direct and best tunes, “Ain’t It Sweet,” the easy answer had to be yes — and the applause showed it. All of Southland Mission was played, not quite in album order, and the band chose to close with a country song, Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Northeast Texas Women.” As he would in New York, Cook complimented the band profusely, calling them a collection of the finest musicians he had worked with. It being the insular Triangle scene, it’s a reasonable guess that many of the people in the crowd knew them, too. Appropriate to the location, the show’s pace was leisurely and relaxed, with long breaks between songs that felt like Phil having a chat with friends. Both “Great Tide” and “Sitting on a Fence” proved to be opportunities for the band to stretch its legs, with guitar breakdowns that took them into longer territory than the tight album versions.

In New York, Phil and the Guitarheels could still welcome a crowd of friends from previous work, though in the club-like, intimate atmosphere of Rough Trade NYC. Phil may have had to exhort this crowd to stop standing so still (clearly he hasn’t seen as many shows in New York as I have), but against the odds, he got what he asked for. It remained an intimate and chatty show, and Phil’s own speech about getting to finally “be the frontman” was a touching one. Similarly, true to the album’s roots, Cook also talked a good bit about his love for the Staples singers (even wearing the T-shirt), and that’s another influence you can feel throughout these songs. For ease of listening, most of the banter tracks aren’t on the streaming versions below, but I’d urge you to download the full sets to get a better flavor of what Cook is about. While there are only so many ways to mix up the tracks on a single album, we got two brand-new covers this time: first, the Blind Boys of Alabama’s “Take Your Burden To the Lord and Leave It There,” and then Curtis Mayfield’s “Talking About My Baby.” Throughout this show, as in North Carolina, you couldn’t have forced the broad smile off of Phil Cook’s face at gunpoint. If there’s a world where nice guys finish first, well, Phil Cook is in pole position, folks.

I recorded the NYC set with a soundboard feed from Rough Trade engineer Danielle DePalma and Schoeps MK4V microphones; the Hopscotch set was recorded by our friend Larry Tucker with Peluso wide-cardiod microphones. The sound quality of both recordings is excellent. Enjoy!

Download the Rough Trade NYC set: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Download the Hopscotch set: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream the Rough Trade NYC set:

Stream the Hopscotch set: 

Phil Cook
2015-06-26
Rough Trade NYC
Brooklyn, NY

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Soundboard (engineer: Danielle DePalma) + Schoeps MK4V (FOB, DFC, PAS)>KC5>CMC6>Edirol R-44>24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (mix down, fades, compression)>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, balance, dither, downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time: 1:10:38]
01 Ain’t It Sweet
02 [banter1]
03 1922
04 [banter2]
05 Belong
06 Sitting On A Fence
07 [banter3-band intros]
08 Time To Wake
09 Anybody Else
10 [banter4]
11 Gone
12 [banter5–speech]
13 Lowly Road
14 [banter6]
15 Great Tide
16 [encore break]
17 Take Your Burden To The Lord and Leave It There [Blind Boys of Alabama]
18 Talking About My Baby [Curtis Mayfield]

________________________________________________
Phil Cook
2015-09-10
Hopscotch Music Festival
Fletcher Opera Theater
Raleigh, NC USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded by Larry Tucker
Produced by acidjack

Peluso CEMC6-CK21 (subcardiod) (Room center hung from balcony rail)>Fostex FR2-LE>24bit/48kHz WAV>Izotope Ozone 5 (EQ, effects)>Audacity 2.0.5 (track, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 Ain’t It Sweet
02 1922
03 Belong
04 [banter1]
05 Sitting On A Fence
06 [banter2]
07 Lowly Road
08 [banter3]
09 Time To Wake
10 Anybody Else
11 [banter4]
12 Gone
13 [banter5]
14 Great Tide
15 [banter6]
16 Northeast Texas Women [Jerry Jeff Walker]

If you enjoyed these recordings, PLEASE SUPPORT Phil Cook, visit his website, and buy Southland Mission from his online store.

IMG_3195

Phil Cook and Caitlin Rose: September 6, 2014 Trekky Records / Hometapes Day Show, Hopscotch Music Festival, Raleigh, NC (FLAC/MP3/Streaming)

September 24, 2014
By


IMG_20140906_145122
[photo by Dan Schram]

Continuing with our theme of one-off collaborations from the Hopscotch Music Festival, our final day show of the festival went down at Raleigh’s Pour House, where local Trekky Records teamed up with Hometapes (a recent transplant to Durham, NC) and one of the more unique performances came from a local-plus-out-of-town duo. Phil Cook and brother Brad, of Megafaun, have become mainstays of the scene around town, with their hands in all kinds of different aspects of the Triangle music world (including Phil’s current tour with Hiss Golden Messenger).  Caitlin Rose, of Nashville, is one of those nominally country singers whose work crosses over to the rock world. Fitting, then, that the two teamed up for a combination of Rose originals, old-time classics, and covers, along with some off-the-cuff and often-hilarious banter. The show gave off the feeling of a rowdy show in somebody’s dark living room on a sunny day, as the mingling crowd of people who seemed to all know each other socialized as the artists did their thing. The musicians’ vibe matched their crowd, with Caitlin and Phil keeping things loose and chatting with us as neighbors. If at times the clinking of glasses and the conversation got a little louder than it should, it didn’t rattle the musicians much, who rewarded us with a fun song selection as well as some impromptu contests and trivia. When Cook played Dylan’s “Only A Hobo”, it was hard not to imagine the song being played to the man’s original crowds, in Greenwich Village clubs as much a part of local social life as revered for the music going down. In its offhandedness, its at-times raggedness, its collaboration among old friends, this felt like the right kind of Saturday set.

As you may have guessed, the crowd was a little noisy during this one. I compensated for that by focusing heavily on a soundboard feed and mixing in just a little of my Schoeps MK41 microphones. So, despite the crowd, the recording is excellent, if you don’t mind hearing some bursts of chatter here and there. Enjoy!

Download the complete set: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream “Answer In One of These Bottles” [Caitlin Rose]

Stream “Only A Hobo” [Bob Dylan, as sung by Phil Cook]

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Phil Cook and Caitlin Rose
2014-09-06
Hometapes / Trekky Day Show
Hopscotch Music Festival
Raleigh, NC USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Soundboard + Schoeps MK41 (at SBD, DINa)>KCY>Z-PFA>Roland R-26>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (mix down, compression, adjust levels)>Izotope Ozone 5 (effects, EQ)>Audacity 2.0.3 (track, fade, amplify, balance)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks
01 [intro]
02 1922 Blues [Charlie Parr; sung by Phil Cook]
03 [banter1]
04 Sinful Wishing Well [Caitlin Rose]
05 [banter2]
06 I’m Sitting on a Fence Too Long [Phil Cook]
07 [banter3]
08 Answer In One of These Bottles [Caitlin Rose]
09 [banter4]
10 Only a Hobo [Bob Dylan, as sung by Phil Cook]
11 [banter5]
12 Learning to Ride [Caitlin Rose]

If you enjoyed this recording, please support these artists. Check out Phil Cook’s work at his website, and Caitlin Rose’s at her website.

Hiss Golden Messenger: September 18, 2014 Rough Trade NYC (FLAC/MP3/Streaming)

September 19, 2014
By


IMG_7819
[photos by acidjack]

I have only seen Hiss Golden Messenger once before with a full band, a revelatory performance at the 2012 Hopscotch Music Festival. Since then, I have caught Mike Taylor several times in what one might call his de facto state, as the solo artist on his own, playing songs the way he did for his stripped-down, four-track album Bad Debt. In my time following Taylor’s work, I have come to see HGM as the embodiment of two different instincts — one, the band-leading artist drawing on his love of audience-pleasing, crowd-moving southern rock and gospel found in particular on Haw and Country Hai East Cotton; the other a man alone in a kitchen beside a sleeping baby, wrestling with his demons as the tape spools away like time. The challenge, and the reward, of Hiss Golden Messenger is the ability to reconcile those impulses.

This set at Rough Trade NYC, sponsored by Aquarium Drunkard, began with one of my all-time favorite HGM numbers, “Red Rose Nantahala” from Haw. As that song segued into the upbeat “Saturday’s Song” from Taylor’s Merge debut, Lateness of Dancers, it almost told the story of the latter-day band in two songs. The first finds Taylor pleading “Oh Lord, let me be happy” and “let me be the one I want”. The next, from an album that by all rights should take HGM to the “next level“, is a grown-up father’s song, about wanting to cut loose on the weekend, drink some whiskey, Sunday hangover be damned. The character in that song seems resolutely himself. Content at last, hangover be damned.

After that second song, Taylor slapped his guitar and noted that a Hiss Golden Messenger tour used to just be him and that single instrument (that’d be as recently as March, when he played a tour de force performance at Mercury Lounge). Today the band is a five-piece that features longtime collaborator Scott Hirsch on bass, Matt Douglas on saxophone, vocals and guitars, Megafaun‘s Phil Cook on keys, banjo and vocals, and Matt McCaughan (Rosebuds, Portastatic, Bon Iver) on drums. In some ways, the band reflects Mike’s changing circumstances, not only as a more known musician, but as an ever-more-firmly entrenched member of the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, North Carolina music scene whose players pop up as regularly on each other’s records as they do at one another’s shows. Lateness feels less like a purely Mike Taylor album and more like a Triangle music album circa 2014, at a time when the scene is flourishing in all sorts of ways, but also ever-more-mindful of its roots. It leans, then, more toward Mike’s country-rock and gospel impulses, and that’s a fine thing.

So when we heard the Poor Moon classics “Blue Country Mystic” and “Call Him Daylight” in this new configuration, they were part of the “dance portion” of the set, an entire concept new to HGM sets that I’ve seen. “Daylight”, in particular, became a twangier, country-funk number, and as Douglas’ sax breakdown hit, the most striking thing of all was that people actually did dance. I shook my head a tad at a reckoning with god inspiring that reaction in people, but when Taylor hit the song’s final, climactic verse, the chills were there. As far as southern rock-via-HGM goes, it’s hard to beat “Lucia” from Lateness, or the equally compelling “Raven (Snake Children” that followed. This was my first time hearing both of these songs live, and they seemed to benefit most from the band and this setup (which isn’t surprising, since these players recorded them). Similarly, the Lateness material I had heard live before — “Southern Grammar” and “Chapter & Verse” — sounded better-realized than ever.

In another sign that today’s HGM is a more collaborative effort these days, the show’s final song was played on the floor, unamplified, with Taylor and the band pressed in on all sides by fans, performing “Drum” as the crowd added its own percussion and sang along. “Take the good news / and carry it away”, the crowd sang, rendering Mike’s voice just one among many. Hiss Golden Messenger has grown from one man and one instrument to a true band, and the good news for us is, they’ve got many miles left to travel. “We’re going to play a lot of shows this year. I guess everybody up here needs to get ready for that,” Taylor told us earlier in the set. That goes for you fans out there, too — here are the current tour dates.

I recorded this set with Schoeps MK4V microphones at the soundboard and a stereo feed from house engineer Cameron. The sound quality is outstanding, though of course note that “Drum” was sung on the floor unamplified, so it sounds like that. Enjoy!

Download the complete show: [MP3] | [FLAC]

Stream the complete show: 

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Hiss Golden Messenger
2014-09-18
Rough Trade NYC
Brooklyn, NY USA

Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack

Schoeps MK4V (inside SBD cage, PAS)>KC5>CMC6>Sound Devices USBPre2 + Soundboard (engineer: Cameron)>Edirol R-44 [OCM]>2x24bit/48kHz WAV>Adobe Audition CS 5.5 (align, mix down, adjust levels, limiter)>Izotope Ozone 5 (light EQ, imaging, effects)>Audacity 2.0.3 (fades, tracking, amplify, balance, downsample, dither)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks:
01 Red Rose Nantahala
02 Saturday’s Song
03 [banter]
04 Mahogany Dread
05 Day O Day (A Love So Free)
06 [banter2]
07 Busted Note
08 [banter3]
09 Blue Country Mystic
10 [banter4]
11 Call Him Daylight
12 [banter5]
13 I’ve Got A Name for the Newborn Child
14 [banter6]
15 Lucia
16 I’m A Raven (Snake Children)
17 [banter7]
18 Southern Grammar
19 [encore break]
20 Chapter & Verse (Ione’s Song)
21 [banter8]
22 Drum [played on the floor]

If you enjoyed this recording, PLEASE SUPPORT Hiss Golden Messenger, visit his website, and buy Lateness of Dancers from Merge Records and his other records from his shop. And see the band on tour.

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Megafaun: May 2, 2014 Baby’s All Right – Flac/MP3/Streaming

May 13, 2014
By

megafaun-17
[photos by Amanda Hatfield]

This was one of those nights. Megafaun aren’t exactly breaking up, but because each member of the trio has an abundant amount of other projects pulling them in all directions, this show at Baby’s All Right had the feeling that it might be the band’s last in NYC, if not forever then for a very long time. The local musical who’s-who seemed to sense the historic nature of the occasion — either that or Megafaun has a lot of important friends. In the crowd was the author Jesse Jarnow, the writer Richard Gehr, Northern Spy Records founder Adam Downey, Sharon Van Etten and every member of her band. But the most notable celeb in attendance was on stage — former bandmate and recent Grammy winner Justin Vernon joined Megafaun for this seemingly final mini-tour. The band’s set was a bit ragged-but-right, as generally speaking most Megafaun sets we’ve seen have been. This is a band known almost as much for its pure spirit as its songwriting and performing. The setlist included pretty much all of the old favorites you’d want to hear, and one excellent cover that we’re streaming below. There will be plenty of opportunities to see the individual members of Megafaun with their various projects — Brad Cook is in Sharon’s current touring band — but this might have been the last proper Megafaun show. As as a send-off, though, it was a pretty sweet show.

This set was recorded by Baby’s FOH Devin Foley with the venue’s installed multitrack system. All I did was mix it down. There was one wrinkle though, as the encore song was played off mic in the middle of the floor. For that song, I only used the two mounted room mics. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!

Stream “Boomer’s Story” (Ry Cooder cover):

This Recording is now Available to Download in FLAC and MP3 and to Stream the Entire Show at Archive.org [HERE].

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Megafaun
2014-05-02
Babys All Right
Brooklyn, NY USA

Digital Soundboard Multitrack Recording

Multitrack Soundboard (engineered and recorded by Devin Foley) > 19 individual 24bit 48kHz wav files > Sonar LE (mixdown) > Soundforge (level adjustments, setfades, patch encore) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and Tagging via Foobar)

Produced by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:01:40]
01 Resurrection
02 Volunteers
03 The Fade
04 [Vern intro]
05 Second Friend
06 You Are The Light
07 Boomers Story [Ry Cooder]
08 [banter – vintage gear]
09 Carolina Days
10 The Robe
11 [banter – friends]
12 Real Slow
13 [banter – Grandma Sparrow]
14 Kaufman’s Ballad
15 [encore break]
16 Worried Man

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Megafaun, visit their website, and purchase their official releases including their latest album Megafaun from Hometapes Records [HERE].

Doug Keith: March 19, 2014 Bowery Ballroom – Flac/MP3/Streaming

March 26, 2014
By

doug-keith-1
[photos by PSquared Photography]

My first introduction to Doug Keith was as the talented multi-instrumentalist who has backed Sharon Van Etten in her rise from local favorite to international star. With the release of his new album Pony, Doug has stepped out from the shadows into the limelight without missing a beat. As he has been a loyal bandmate, as frontman Doug has reaped the benefit of good karma to gather some of the best musicians around to help with the album and the tour. Dinosaur Jr.’s guitar maven J. Mascis guests on the album’s “Pure Gold in the 70s” (live version streaming below), and the tour group is a band of all-stars featuring Zeke Hutchins from SVE Band on drums, and brothers Phil and Brad Cook from Megafaun (and a bunch of other projects) on guitars, keyboards and bass. At Bowery Ballroom last Wednesday, Doug’s set opening for The War On Drugs was a very satisfying forty-minute set that featured six of the nine tracks from Pony and one neat cover. With Sharon due to tour the world beginning in June, its likely that the solo Doug Keith will be on the shelf for a while. But we’ll have this special set to keep us until his return.

I recorded this set in the same manner as the War On Drugs set and except for a little bit of crowd chatter, the sound quality is equally superb. Enjoy!

Stream “Pure Gold in the 70s”:

Download the Complete Show [MP3] / [FLAC]

Note: All of the material on this site is offered with artist permission, free to fans, at our expense. The only thing we ask is that you download the material directly from this site, rather than re-posting the direct links or the files on other sites without our permission. Please respect our request.

Doug Keith
2014-03-19
Bowery Ballroom
New York, NY

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard + Sennheiser MKH-8040s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Mod) > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, mixdown, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)

Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper

Setlist:
[Total Time 35:04]
01 Harvest Home
02 You Can’t Stand to be Alone
03 [banter – Zeke]
04 The Apostles
05 Pure Gold in the 70s
06 [banter – Brad]
07 Black Metal Black
08 Wasn’t Born to Follow [Carole King/Byrds]
09 [banter – records]
10 I Will Burn For You

If you download this recording from NYCTaper, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Doug Keith, visit his website, and purchase Pony from his Bandcamp Page [HERE].

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