St.
Paul, MN: Red House Records is proud to announce that songwriter/guitarist
CHARLIE
PARR has joined its roster. Parr will be releasing a new studio album, Stumpjumper, on April
28, 2015. You can listen to a track from the album, "Over
the Red Cedar," today premiering at MPR
The Current here. Charlie has announced tour dates through April
(scroll down for complete dates), including a Nashville show at Ryman Auditorium
on Saturday February 7 supporting fellow Minnesota players Trampled by
Turtles.
Long a part of the vibrant Duluth, MN, music scene (Low,
Trampled by Turtles), Charlie traveled to North Carolina to record this album
with fellow musician
Phil Cook (Megafaun, Hiss Golden Messenger). As well as being the first
album Charlie has recorded outside of his native Minnesota -- he joined Cook and
a cast of local players, setting up in an old outbuilding on the “Down Yonder
Farm” in rural North Carolina -- it’s also the first to feature a full band.
Percussive and raw, the 11 songs on Stumpjumper, 10 originals and his version of the
venerable murder ballad, “Delia,” could be lost field recordings from another
era. His blistering picking -- he switches between acoustic guitar, dobro and
banjo -- and keening, cut-through-the-crowd vocals resonate with a conviction
that runs deep and true. It's the music of a self-taught guitarist and banjo
player who grew up listening to his dad's recordings of America's musical
founding fathers, including Charley Patton and Lightnin' Hopkins, Woody Guthrie
and Leadbelly. His heartfelt and plaintive original folk blues and traditional
spirituals don't strive for authenticity: they are authentic.
“Red House has always held an exalted place in my heart
because of their connectedness to the Midwest, because of Greg Brown, because of
Koerner Ray and Glover, Paul Geremia, Guy Davis and so on and on,” Parr says.
“Greg Brown introduced me to [late Red House founder] Bob Feldman at least 12
years ago on a farm in Wisconsin and he was so gracious and kind. I'm looking
forward to being part of the family.”
“Signing Charlie is one of the most exciting things we
have done in recent years,” says Red House president Eric Peltoneimi. “He is a
mesmerizing artist and we have been fans of his for a long time. Charlie is one
of only a very few these days whose music sprouts from the true vine ... from
that deep-rooted place in the American soul."
Parr’s inspiration is drawn from the alternately fertile
and frozen soil of Minnesota; his songs exude a Midwestern sensibility and
humility. Parr grew up in the Hormel meat packing city of Austin, MN
(population 25,000) where most of the world's favorite tinned meat, Spam, is
still manufactured. The combination of growing up with both of his parents
working proud union jobs in an industrial meat factory and his largely rural
environment had a broad impact on Parr.
"Every morning you'd hear the [factory] whistles blow,
when I was a kid they had the stockyards and animals there, so you were
surrounded by this atmosphere," Parr says. Out the back door were soybean
fields, as far as the eye could see. "As a kid I thought it was kind of boring,
but now I go and visit my mom and I think it's the most beautiful landscape
there is."
Most of his recordings to date have eschewed typical
studio settings; he’s recorded in warehouses, garages, basements and
storefronts, usually on vintage equipment, which gives his work the historic
feel of field recordings. It's not because he wants to sound like he was
discovered 75 years ago by Alan Lomax; it’s because most modern recording
studios make the reticent and self-effacing Parr feel uncomfortable. After a
health scare a few years back, he lives very simply, no alcohol and a vegan
diet, often cooking up his rice and beans on his engine manifold on the lonely,
cross-country drives. He doesn’t go in much for fashion and frills and lives
simply on the road, usually sleeping in his car.
The songs for Stumpjumper were written on the road, where Parr, touring solo,
spends a few hundred days a year. “I was in a cocoon, traveling alone with my
guitar, spending entire days without saying a word out loud.” Overwhelmed by the
endless stream of bad news he was hearing, Charlie flipped off his radio and
drove in silence to North Carolina to record at producer Phil Cook’s
studio in rural Hillsborough, NC, where he met his “band” for the first time.
“I drove through the trees and into a clearing where a
group of buildings and some horses and a couple donkeys stood around. Phil
stepped out from the barn to welcome me to my new home, at least it felt like
home,” Parr says. “I left North Carolina after we recorded these songs, all
live, mostly first takes, and drove with all the windows down all the way to
Knoxville, listening to the world's wind rush by, hearing its news. It was good
news, finally.”
The songs are inspired by family members, the Bible,
overheard conversations and places in his life. A native Minnesotan, he draws
sustenance from the surprisingly large, thriving and mutually supportive music
scene of Duluth: Parr's 2011 album of traditional songs, Keep Your Hands on the Plow, features locals
including Charlie's wife, Emily
Parr, old-timey banjo/fiddle band Four
Mile Portage and Alan
Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of Low.
The title track finds Charlie tapping into his
childhood. “Songs aren't normally very autobiographical for me, they're more
like stories, but this one is different,” he says. “I can see a 1966
International Harvester pickup truck with no hood and four snow tires, breaking
field road land-speed records on my way to my job in a filling
station.”
Tracks include “Evil
Companion,” “Frank
Miller Blues” (Death visits Frank to take him home but Frank needs to finish
his chores and so Death helps out. Frank's wife is pissed) and “Remember
Me If I Forget” which Parr dedicates to his Aunt Mid. “She was a tough
customer ... also wise, sensitive, and hilariously funny. She stomped the terra,
as they say.”
“Empty
Out Your Pockets” is a song Parr describes as “another angry hymn from
me.”
“All of the ones I've written so far seem to rely on God
being a kind of big brother who shows up one day after you've been getting your
ass kicked all over town by bullies and he takes care of business. I know, it's
juvenile, but take a close look at a lot of legitimate hymns - ‘when I die I'm
gonna tell God what you did to me’ comes to mind.”
Quiet and thoughtful, Parr always includes a
few traditional songs of the hard life and the hereafter in his live sets. Such
music isn't necessarily rooted in the Methodist church in which he grew up: "It
was more like, let's get the service over quick so we can get downstairs and
drink coffee and have pie!"
But faith, though undefined, underlines all of Charlie's
music, both in the listening, the covering, the writing and performing. For more
information on Charlie, go to
Charlie
Parr on Tour
* With Trampled by Turtles
# With J.D. Wilkes
+ With Betse Ellis
TH 2/5 Bloomington, IN - Bluebird Nightclub *
FR 2/6 St. Louis, MO - The Pageant *
SA 2/7 Nashville, TN - Ryman Auditorium *
FR 2/13 Dresser, WI - Trollhaugen
SA 2/14 La Crosse, WI - The Root Note
FR 2/20 Berwyn, IL - Fitzgerald’s Nightclub
SA 2/21 Minneapolis, MN - Cedar Cultural Center
SA 2/28 Ludlow, KY - Ludlow Theater #
MO 3/2 New York, NY - The Iridium
WE 3/4 Northampton, MA - The Parlor Room #
TH 3/5 Cambridge, MA - Atwoods Tavern #
FR 3/6 Winooski, VT - The Monkey House
SA 3/7 Rochester, NY - Abilene Bar and Lounge #
SU 3/8 Albany, NY - The Linda, WAMC’s Performing Arts Studio
#
TU 3/10 Pittsburgh, PA - Club Cafe #
WE 3/11 Maumee, OH - Village Idiot #
TH 3/12 Milwaukee, WI - Linneman’s
FR 3/13 Bayport, MN - Bayport BBQ
FR 3/20 Minocqua, WI - Minocqua Brewing Company
SA 3/21 North Mankato, MN - Equinox Fair, Best Western
Mankato
MO 3/23 Lutsen, MN - Papa Charlie’s
FR 3/27 Fort Collins, CO - Aggie Theater
SA 3/28 Denver, CO - Hi-Dive +
WE 4/1 Boise, ID – Nerolux +
TH 4/2 Seattle, WA - Tractor Tavern +
FR 4/3 Portland, OR - Mississippi Studios +
SA 4/4 Missoula, MT - Top Hat Lounge
MO 4/6-WE 4/8 Reno, NV - Peppermill Resort Spa Casino +
TH 4/9 Berkeley, CA - Freight and Salvage +
TH 4/23 Winona, MN - Midwest Music Festival (Broken World
Records)
FR 4/24 Stoughton, WI - Stoughton Opera House
SA 4/25 Zumbrota, MN - Crossings At Carnegie - 7pm
CHARLIE
PARR ONLINE
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