I had the distinct opportunity to sit down with the one and only Charlie Parr on his birthday the morning after his show at the Opera House in Stoughton, WI to cover a variety of topics. We spoke of growing up in Austin, MN, his music career in Duluth, and his brand new album Stumpjumper.
Charlie brought his unique brand of guitar playing on his National Resonator and 12-String, as well as his open-back fretless banjo to the Opera House april 24th to perform a blend of traditional folk songs, as well as songs off his older, as well as brand new albums.
The show closed with a chilling version of “Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down” that satisfied the faithful crowd in Stoughton, where Mr. Parr has now become a staple act.
We met the next morning at the Koffee Kup Restaurant, right next door to the Opera House, before Charlie set off on the road again:
So tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up in Austin, Minnesota?
It’s not a big town, 23,000 now I think. The only thing there is Hormel’s, that’s the meat processing plant. My Dad worked there, my Mom worked there, my Sister still works there. It kind of permeates the town. I had memories as a kid of the smell of “rendering” and when my parents came home they were covered in “stuff” from the plant. When I was young I spent a ton of time by myself, and was a “latch-key child of sorts. When I would get home from school, and all my friends from the neighborhood, ya know, the ‘packinghouse kids”, would all get together and play and blow stuff up, and started fires and dug holes. This would go on until 6-7 or so when our parents got home and made dinner then they would sleep in their chairs until bedtime. I just ran kind of wild i guess.
So you started playing music at a relatively early age?
My Dad bought me my first guitar when I was I think, 7 or so and I sat and listened to records and tried to play along. The records my Dad had were like no other records in town. He had Lightnin’ Hopkins, Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, and volumes of the Harry Smith Anthology. My Dad had this ramshackle music collection. It’s true that most of the records were just the records, there were no sleeves or covers, because I had destroyed everything. I was a scorched earth child, buy me something and I would play with it for a minute the way it was supposed to be played with, then I would disassemble it to see what was inside, then destroy the pieces, then someone would come up and sweep them up and take them away and then I would be left with nothing again, and that’s how I lived my life. I sat and I obsessed about that music at a really young age. I had friends in the neighborhood who were like “this is horrible music”, you should listen to, say Nazareth. And I would go over to their house and listen to this music like Hair Of The Dog with lyrics like “now you’re messing with a, son of a bitch”. I remember his Dad coming up and we were playing that “son of a bitch” song and he takes the record and goes away. he comes back a little later and puts the record back on on the next song, and I looked and he had taken a nail and scratched though that one song until it was unplayable. I’ve still got those old records and were obsessed with them and still listen to them all the time. They still have the same affect on me, this weird ethereal effect, I don’t know what it is but those records are just like power to me. I still wanna play along, I’m self taught and play by ear and feel and figure my way through stuff. These weird angular versions of blues songs that work for me. So that was my childhood and when I was a teenager I dropped out of High School on the first day of 10th grade, all I wanted to do was play the guitar and bum around. I got in a ton of trouble in my teenage years, mostly drunken disorderly, had a mercury Cougar that my Dad sold to bail me out, then went in front of the judge and he inspired me to do something with me life so I wouldn’t go in front of him again. I did finally get it together and got my GED, and struggled through 7 years of College at Augsburg in Minneapolis where I earned a degree in Philosophy, which turns out to be very personally rewarding but professionally useless. After College I got a job working for an outreach program. We did outreach for people in Minneapolis, and for the next 15 years, that is all I wanted to do. I’m actually on hiatus, I quit 11 years ago. I was doing well, and left to pursue music, and the boss said whenever this music business thing falls apart, come on back. What is was was an old bread truck that they converted into a food truck for the homeless. We served people under bridges and down by the railroad tracks. Everywhere that people were living outside. This shelters in Minneapolis were always full. We would just go and find the people outside, make sure they are ok, give them food and blankets, and we had access to a bunch of services, psychiatric, nurses, etc.. In the 80’s and 90’s Ronald Reagan decided it would be a good idea to not have institutions anymore but he didn’t do the next best thing, he just shut down the institutions and put a lot of people who are severely mentally ill out on the street, unmedicated. Many active war veterans with schizophrenia, ptsd, etc.. We served up to 400 people everyday with hot meals, clean socks, etc.. I currently do 2-4 benefits a year for different homeless shelters
Tell me a little bit about the music scene in Duluth, MN where you currently reside?
I’ve lived in Duluth since 1999. It’s weird, when I lived in Minneapolis we lived in Uptown. It was hard because I usually play solo and it was hard to get shows and I was always working for tips. It was fine, I really enjoyed it. I got to play at the Viking Bar. Every once in awhile i would get a show at the Riverside Cafe, and it was fine. We then moved to Duluth because my wife Emily got a job as a drama teacher. I was transitioning to this homeless outreach program in Duluth from Minneapolis. In Duluth they served primarily Native Americans coming down from the range. I was very lucky I got in with that group and started working right away. I would go out and see music and there was music everywhere, every night. There was all this music, hip hop, rock bands, blues bands, and tons and tons of folkies and string bands everywhere. So I started to make some friends and playing music and I got this regular weekly gig. Then I started getting gigs in Minneapolis, I think because I lived in Duluth. Duluth’s music scene has been really good to me. I think it’s such a small place that people have to get along, because you’ll end up on the bill with someone you got in a fight with inevitably. The music scene in Duluth is so diverse that it doesn’t feel competitive.
Tell me a little bit about your new album , Stumpjumper, and the recording process and songs.
Some of the songs are as much as a year and a half old. These songs weren’t really fitting the mold of what songs that I write and play usually do. I’ve been friends with Phil Cook for a long time and told him I have all these weird songs. Phil told me I should do something different for once, “you should leave Minnesota, come down to Hillsborough, NC for awhile and I’ve got this weirdo barn in the middle of the woods and I’ve got some friends and we can just sit around and play and see what these songs do.” Phil, God bless him, had this beautiful old 8 track tape machine out there, and his buddy Nick from Wisconsin is a great engineer, and James and Ryan were there, you know guys that just play everything. We just sat down and started to play, and we played for about two hours, and we were like, “this is amazing”. So Nick set up a tape machine and started taping it, and everything on there is like 1st and 2nd takes. It was that kind of day, Emily had flown out and the kids where there running around the farm playing with the chickens and it was that kind of day where everything just felt so good. The next morning I came back with this mindset of “well we better get back to work” and we started listening to the playbacks and we were like “this is the record here”, it’s live, it’s spontaneous, and I hope this this joy of playing permeates the record. Phil helped me sequence the album and we made some mixing decisions but honestly there wasn’t much to do. After that I set off for Knoxville for my next show and I got back home and there was the mastered version and it was everything I wanted. I got together with Eric Peltoniemi from Red House Records, and I always had a ton of respect for that label. He listened to it, he loved it, and he wanted to put it out. Redhouse pressed it on Vinyl as well, which actually sells better for me than CD’s. I’m still the guy when I listen to the record I sit there and look at the sleeve. Stumpjumper, with the help of Phil’s sequencing, really feels like an album to me, it feels like it is supposed to feel. My sister recently gave me her original copy of Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart and I sat down and listened to it much to the horror of Emily.
Charlie Parr has an extensive summer tour of shows and festivals planned that finishes up at the Whispering Beard Folk Festival in Friendship, Indiana on August 29th. Be sure to pick up a copy of his new album, Stumpjumper and catch him at a town or festival near you.