21 February 2011 (gig)
24 February 2011
True it's not to everyone's taste but I do like it when an act opens and turns what you think is a tuning exercise into an instrumental performance that works on so many levels that it invokes the sounds and smells of another place. It this case it's the frontier of small town America still reeling from the depression. And the gentleman is Charlie Parr.
Singing songs of ghosts, pistols and backwoods. Parr seeks no redemption, and if this guy isn't the real thing he's damn good at it, effortlessly rolling from one country blues song to another with nods to both Woody Guthrie and Mississippi John Hurt. Of course with this type of music you have to have a train song, and he doesn't fail to deliver. "Yeah we robbed that train. Me and Jesse James!" he hollers on 'I Dreamed I saw Jesse James' from his latest album 'When The Devil Goes Blind'.
Sporting the long unkempt beard that we now expect of this genre he enforces the stereotype with a hunting joke from his home state of Minnesota before he breaks into Mastodon (another from his current album) about how he doesn't feel welcome at home. I'm sure this is in reference to his home town rather than his with his wife, as some of the more unusual highlights of the show are him conversing with his spouse Emily who sits dutifully beside the stage and whom Parr claims is drunk on Red Stripe beer. In turn he dedicates a 'love song' in her honour — a 1920s murder ballad by Blind Blake.
Throughout the performance the audience remains silent only applauding between the numbers or to answer a call from Charlie Parr himself. Indeed they're mesmerized as he rolls through both old and new songs, even throwing in an acappella number for a finale. Parr only touches on his eight album catalog and you know he's holding back dozens more. He's a certainty for recommendation and it's very likely that every show will be a very different but an enjoyable selection from this fine songsmith.
