Charlie Parr Atwood’s Tavern 11/4/15 Show Review

Last week, I got the chance to chat with Charlie. He was gracious and thoughtful and you should check out the interview here.

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“Everyone from Duluth says hi,” Charlie Parr told the crowd at Atwood’s on Wednesday night. He’s the type of guy who probably does know everyone in Duluth, where he lives and, when he’s not on the road, plays a regular gig at The Red Herring Lounge. He is an unassuming performer, by which I mean when he talks he is self-deprecating and humble and when he plays and sings it is unrestrained and true.

He played songs from his entire catalogue of over twenty-five years making music. He began with a new song, tentatively named “Otis Meets The Devil,” and then launched into “Falcon,” from Stumpjumper, which was raw and full of energy. The song was inspired by John Tanner’s narrative of his life as a white child raised among the Ojibwa tribe in the late-18th and early-19th Century. Tanner chose to return to the Ojibwa after experiencing white civilization and there is no historical trace of him after 1830. The chorus rang through the whole room: “When I pass by / When I pass by, / When I pass by, / Lord, please cover up my tracks.”

After these opening numbers, he said: “I’m going to play a folksong. Wait, that’s not good banter. Um…I’m going to bring it down a bit for the lovers.” The song for the lovers was a haunting version of “Moonshiner”. He put down his acoustic twelve-string and picked up his resonator to play slide guitar, with “Frank Miller’s Blues,” “True Friends,” and then a double-time version of “1922 Blues,” one of his best-known songs. “1922” references the very poor upbringing his parents experienced in Minnesota: “Well I worked all summer, couldn’t save a cent / Gave all my money to the government / I don’t know just how it got spent / But the banks are coming for my deed, boys / Man at the mill can’t see, boys / Let me get my feed for free, boys / Ain’t that the way it is.” These are the kinds of songs that Parr writes and you can tell just by reading the lyrics why some people have said that when you listen to him, you can’t tell which songs were written in 2015 and which ones were written in 1915.

By this point, Atwood’s was quiet, with everyone leaning in, craning around each other to get a look at the precise picking that Charlie does with just his thumb and index finger. He developed arthritis in his right hand due to the way he braced his pinky against the guitar for most of his career, leading him to have to make the adjustment to his picking style, which, he’s said, has enabled him to go faster than he did before. He played a few softer songs, including “Hobo,” “Old Blue,” and then the dark and somewhat sinister “Cheap Wine.”

When he picked up his resonator again he talked a bit about his mother, who is 87. He told her recently that when he put new strings on the resonator, he’d play her a song. “I’ve heard you play plenty of songs. How about you get me some toast?” I think I know where he gets his dry sense of humor. One of the highlights of this set was his cover of Dock Boggs’s “Country Blues.” He translates the banjo picking seamlessly to the guitar and vocally really captures all the modulation that is common in old-time music but is pretty hard to do well.

To introduce his song “Badger,” one of my favorites, he said, “I’m going to play a ballad I wrote. It’s a short song, so it’s a good one to play while you’re trying to figure out what to play next.” “Badger” is a vignette of a memory he has from growing up when he and his family returned from “swimming at Uncle Henry’s farm” to find a badger on their property; his father waited it out with a shotgun. It’s a wonderful representation of restraint in songwriting–it’s all matter of fact, telling details: “Fallen soldiers from the six pack was laying at his feet / Sometime in the night a gunshot woke me from my sleep.” There’s so much in this song–the relationship between a boy and his dad, a certain amount of innocence lost, and the juxtaposition of the romantic memory of their family swimming trip with the jarring gunshot. This is one of Parr’s great gifts as a songwriter–to say what should be said and no more.
The last few songs of the set were simply brilliant. “Over the Red Cedar,” which is, I think, the best song from Stumpjumper, with the incredibly beautiful refrain: “And the red cedar grows, the red cedar flows / Long after you’re gone / It’s outlastin’ you.” There is worry in this song and, as if to reinforce that sense of anxiety, there isn’t any rhyming in the verses. This song gets better every time I hear it. He paired “Red Cedar” with “Mastadon,” another song that reflects on mortality and the two echoed off each other in mood and lyric.

He ended with two romps–”Stumpjumper” and “Jubilee”. We all wanted more. He said, in his characteristic understated fashion, not leaving the stage, “I’ll play another if you want, but I don’t think you should have to clap while I walk around.” Then he blew us away with an a capella version of “Ain’t No Grave.” I’ve seen him do it before, and it is transfixing–he is totally committed to the song and taps into something deeper when he performs it.

This was the type of show you don’t want to end. The good news is that Charlie’s becoming a fixture at Atwood’s. He’ll be back, and I hope it’s soon.