Today North Carolina pianist, producer, and songwriter Phil Cook releases a new standalone single, the piano-centric take on “I Made a Lovers Prayer” alongside a new visualizer made by Daniel Fox. “I Made a Lovers Prayer” — the slow-motion wrecking ball that sways near the end of Gillian Welch’s 2003 album, Soul Journey — contains as many questions as answers: Does love lead to doom or offer deliverance? Does it render us with wonder or woe? There is no easy way to parse any of it. 

Cook’s solo interpretation of that elliptical gem was recorded in the throes of intense personal upheaval. In Fall 2022, Cook found himself living alone on his friends’ farm in North Carolina’s Piedmont. There, on the edge of forests and fields, he would wake to a dawn chorus, his window left slightly ajar to let the sound in. Cook began recording these birds and responding to them at the instrument that is the prolific multi-instrumentalist’s first and most steadfast love: the piano.

For nearly five minutes here on “Lovers Prayer,” Cook indulges in that absolute ambiguity, the racing-heart motion of one hand countered by the stops and starts, furrowed brows and furtive glances of the other. Where is this all going, he seems to ask without a word, and who will I be when I get there? Two decades ago, Welch and David Rawlings built the musical and conceptual frame into which Cook steps here. For himself, at last, he’s trying to solve riddles he knows are beyond us all.

From Phil Cook: “This song by Gillian Welch has gotten me through a lot in the last 20 years. The piano has gotten me through a lot in the last 40 years. Putting them together has been a revelation for me and I’m glad to share that with you all today. Much love.”