Charlie Parr recently released his latest album, the eponymous Charlie Parr (Red House Records). It was recorded in one day with some amazing players and features both new songs and some of Charlie’s best-loved songs, reinterpreted for the new record. It includes “To A Scrapyard Bus Stop,” which was the song that my friend sent to me, introducing me to Charlie’s work more than ten years ago. I loved the song immediately and am so glad to have this new version to hear and enjoy. For what it’s worth, I love the timing on Charlie’s vocals in this new version–you can hear him struggling with the anxiety and proximity to this person he knew, but “can’t say how,” in a way that wasn’t necessarily as evident in earlier versions.

We talked about a lot of things–specific songs, maintaining mental health, and the exigencies of the music industry–but we started talking a bit about North Carolina. I’ve recently moved here and Charlie recorded his album Stumpjumper here, with the help of Phil Cook, Ryan Gustafson, James Wallace, and others. So we’ll just pick up there, with Charlie thinking about that time recording that album here in Hillsborough, North Carolina….

CP: That stands as one of the most amazing experiences as far as recording goes. For me, I like performing. I like shows, and recording is not that comfortable. But those guys, within no time at all, it felt like we’d known each other for a long time and we just sat down and played like we’d always been playing. 

RLR: I’ve heard almost the exact opposite comment from so many people: that playing shows and being on the road is an occupational hazard, but the studio is a really fun time to explore and tinker. Can you say a little more about what you mean about the difference between that studio experience and performance? 

CP: I’ve always felt this way. The first time I recorded in a “studio” (it was just a dude’s home studio in his basement) even felt like, “Why are we doing this?” The people aren’t here, it’s not any fun.” There’s an energy you get from a performance, and toying with the line that separates you from the audience and see how much you can get it to be blurry so that’s a common experience. I find that when I get to play shows, that’s actually the time that I can play around with songs, see how they work, take them apart and put them back together–it’s like experimenting in real-time in front of the people and you can tell really fast if what you’re doing is not engaging anybody or yourself. And this is all really subjective to me, this is just how I feel about it: when I get to perform, that’s why I’m here. It feels a lot like making records is a performance without the substance, it’s almost sterile. I guess the records are advertisements to get people to come the shows so we can work this out together. 

 

 

RLR: I read somewhere that there was almost an opportunity to record this album in front of an audience…

CP: I was gonna finally reach that point where I got it all worked out at once. We booked the studio time, we planned it out. It was going to be a small audience, kind of a black box kind of situation. We were just gonna set the thing rolling and record a whole two, two and a half hour show, and then pick through it and make a record out of that. I still want to do that.  

This time, a lot of other things got in the way, including my own self. But we’d already booked the time, so my friends and I had exactly 11 hours to get this done. It’s mostly live, in a studio with no people in it. If you get the record, there’s a picture of this big empty space with no people in it; that’s how it feels–just playing for nobody. 

RLR: One of the things I was thinking as I was listening was having seen Mikkel [Beckman] live changes the way I hear the record. I got to see you at Newport last summer and having that image of him playing connects me to this record in a new way. 

CP: Yeah, it’s a good point. When Mikkel and I started playing together, 1997 I suppose, we didn’t think about recording. We were going down to the Viking Bar on Wednesdays for the Fat Chance Jug Band night, just trying to sit in once in a while. It was a party–they didn’t hit the stage, they just reigned throughout the bar. That’s what I based everything on when we got to create our own folk blues night. 

He is super dynamic, and we fed off each other, and we fed off the audience, and it turned into a big old West Bank blues party. When we tried to record, we’d listen to it and say, “That sucks, that’s dead.” It sounds like Mikkel’s playing typewriter and we struggled for a long time to make this sound like the party we’re having. I don’t think we’re there yet. Mikkel’s been one of my best friends for 25 years or more. He’s been a huge inspiration to me, just that way when music is live, music is being made, and recordings aren’t really the same. 

RLR: I talked with Griffin Sherry from The Ghost of Paul Revere and he said that they’d heard so many people say, “Your albums just don’t capture the live energy of your shows.” So they went into the studio for their last record thinking: the point of making this record is not to capture a live show, this is different. It’s a completely different project and a different goal. 

CP: That’s super legitimate, there’s a lot of music that can’t be recreated live the way it can be in the studio. Look at The Grateful Dead, for example. If you’re a Deadhead and you went to shows–I went to shows in the late ‘80s–and listen to tapes. The popular consensus was The Dead weren’t able to capture it in the studio, and at the time, I thought, “Yeah, that’s right.” But now, as an older Deadhead, I think, “No, no, no–that’s not right at all. They captured something completely different in the studio that they’d never be able to capture on stage. It’s a different band altogether, and it’s not better or worse band.” I think Griffin’s got a good point. I wish I had the kind of skill in the studio to make a record that I couldn’t play on stage, but I haven’t gotten there yet. 

RLR: I saw a photo of you the other day and I was shocked because you were standing up. What the hell is going on? 

CP: [Laughs] Here’s the thing: last year, I started playing electric guitar in a drone band in Minneapolis. We’re doing live-scoring of independent films, stuff like that. I’ve always played resonator guitars and acoustic guitars and I haven’t had a lot of experience with electric guitars. I approached it like I was learning a new instrument and I had a pretty good time with it. 

During some of the drone band shows, I was getting a lot of sounds that I wasn’t expecting, because suddenly there’s two things now: there’s the guitar and then there’s this amplifier that I’m not used to having around. So I started standing up to get away from the amplifier; and as I started moving around, I found I was able to manipulate my sound a little bit–which is elementary, stupid, guitar 101, but for me it was a whole new world. 

So we did a bluegrass festival on the same weekend as a drone show. So that band is actually the drone band, just playing my songs. We had a really fun time stretching out some of my songs and making them flow in a different way. It’s probably not something I’m going to do a lot but I had a really, really nice time and it felt like a new way bring these songs to life for the audience–who, for better or for worse, were there to hear bluegrass music and suddenly they were confronted with whatever this was. But they were very gracious about it and I had a great time. I didn’t get too many Newport ‘65 references, but I got a few of ‘em.  

RLR: I think every interview you’ve given about this new record has made reference to your accident skateboarding last summer. But someone told me you’d had to adjust your fingerpicking due to injury a while ago – how did these two physical injuries compare? 

CP: It’s actually a brain disorder called focal dystonia. I developed that is 2009 and lost the use of all but my forefinger and my thumb. So I used to play fingerstyle, using my middle finger and my ring finger and anchoring my pinky onto the body of the guitar. And I played with a different posture. I spent a year trying to figure out what was wrong with me, and there’s no treatment for it, except to stop playing guitar and that wasn’t going to happen. 

My hand now involuntarily goes into a fist and I can poke my forefinger and my thumb out; so in 2009-2010 I was relearning how to play my parts, using only those two fingers. And I had to start using fingerpicks because my hand is really weak. I was told this generated in my brain and not my hand, so going to hand specialists and chiropractors wasn’t doing much.  

When I broke my shoulder last year, the record company had a lot of fun making a big deal of it, because evidently it’s press-worthy. [Laughs] It bothers me, because I don’t think it’s helping me much. I had a lot of pain, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it was in 2009 when I had the brain thing.  

RLR: Thinking about those two experiences, it seems like the focal dystonia was a lot more disruptive. 

CP: It was. It was like someone cut off three of my fingers. I can’t do fingerstyle anymore. So the trills and the certain tricks that you do when you play fingerstyle aren’t available to me anymore. I’ve developed a way to play that is satisfying to me without those other fingers. I wouldn’t pick it, but I’m satisfied and I can still get to the things I want to get to. 

When I broke my shoulder, The surgeon was optimistic that I’d be able to play guitar again, but he said it would take a long time. It took less time than he thought it would, but that was due to me being really pig-headed and playing the guitar too soon and enduring more pain than I probably needed to. 

 

 

RLR: When you say that a big deal has been made of this, but you don’t know if that’s helpful, what do you mean?

CP: I understand how the business works. A few years back, I hired a manager, because I know how this business works, and I don’t care for it that much; it’s exhausting. When Dog came out, they talked a lot about clinical depression, because, at the time it was a huge feature of my life and it was impossible not to deal with it. And then this record comes out and it’s like: “What can we talk about? What bad thing has happened to you now? Oh, you fell off a skateboard! That’s perfect, we’ll use that.” And it’s like, can’t we just put out the record and say: “Look, here’s another stupid record by this kind of washed up folksinger from Duluth? Can’t we say that instead?” “No, no, we gotta have an angle, we gotta have a thing. You being clumsy and old is our thing. Before it was you’re mentally ill and suicidal, that was a good thing. Now you’re just clumsy and old. Who’s gonna listen to this record anyway? It’s not that big of a deal.” [Note: Charlie wasn’t laughing because he’s midwestern and it wouldn’t be good sarcasm if he were laughing, but I was crying I was laughing so hard.]

I get it, that’s how the business works. But it is a little but debilitating sometimes because these are songs that are a big deal to me. I worked hard–well, [Laughs] I didn’t work hard on the record, because it only took 11 hours to do it–but I worked hard on the songs, because they took my life. You know what I mean, I don’t mean to sound flippant about it, but sometimes I feel that way. 

RLR: OK, well let’s turn to the actual songs on the record. The record starts with “Love is an Unraveling Bird’s Nest.” It feels like the words could stand alone as a poem, without music and the music could be an instrumental. How did that song come together?

CP: I’m glad you like that song, because that song is my favorite one that I’ve written in the last few years. And it feels more song-y than other songs; it’s actually got kind of a hint of a bridge in there, which is weird for me, I don’t usually bother with that kind of shit. On the one hand, it’s just about some birds building a nest and rebuilding a nest every year. But it’s also about the last five to ten years my marriage came apart and it’s been a wild ride with that. My ex and I are getting closer now, but we’ve never gotten to a point of being comfortable with how it all came apart. And we’ve both kind of moved on a little bit, but not enough to make it look normal, because we’re close and we talk almost every day, but that thing is gone. And we’re 

still rebuilding every year for the kids, but that spark of love is missing now…so maybe it’s about that. As I was writing it, I felt like it was a really happy and hopeful song but then I played it for a friend and she was like, “Oh my God, that’s so sad,” and I was like, “But it’s not.” It’s not sad at all; I think it’s really, really hopeful. 

RLR: I love the line about repairing a door, it’s just jumped up and grabbed me for some reason. 

CP: That’s the thing I love about life sometimes: you can count on some things needing to be fixed kind of all the time, and screen doors and never not-needing to be fixed. It’s not even irritating. I kind of like that, I like to be able to depend on that needing my attention. My kids are teenagers now, and they don’t want to talk to me; my ex doesn’t want anything to do with me; the screen door may need my help. 

RLR: I didn’t take it as a sad song either, but one of the things that struck me is that our lives are built out of small moments. 

CP: That’s true. And not only is it true, but I’ve been in therapy for depression now for years and what it’s come down to for me is that exact sentiment. In order to get through a lot of days – I don’t currently take medication, I’m just doing therapy and these personal biofeedback techniques, and what I’ve found helps me the most is just understanding that the most important moments of my life are just these miniscule little things that are not miniscule at all but make up the bulk of my life. Especially recently, [these techniques] have kept me out of that foggy depth of being depressed and suicidal and have really saved my life over and over again. 

RLR: I’ve got even more to think about that song now. We’ve talked before about songs never being finished. But you mentioned in a recent interview that some songs keep you interested. On this record, you revisit a few – Bus Stop, Cheap Wine, and Jubilee. Can you talk about one of those songs and what it is that keeps you curious about it? 

CP: It’s hard to name it. With the example of “Cheap Wine,” it is the dumbest set of four chords, it’s nauseating, it happens over and over and over again. “Cheap Wine” has always felt like a knot in my shoelace, and I don’t want to throw the shoes away, because they’re still good, but I can’t get the damn knot out of the shoelace, and so I keep coming back to it. It doesn’t change substantially, although it did when we changed it into an electric song for that festival and that was kind of interesting. But the story’s always basically the same. The thing that changes about it is that it’s a vibey kind of thing and I get kind of obsessed with those weird repeating things. It’s like that idea we just talked about, the most important things being little, these little moments, that song has that thing about it. It’s both about this monumental event of this liquor store owner killing someone and framing someone else for the murder (that’s pretty big) and it’s also about these really mundane things, like him putting bottles on the shelf. For some reason, I’ve been not able to not play that song for long periods of time, and I don’t know why, but it doesn’t feel like it’s done and it feels like a work in progress to me. 

 

RLR: Thinking about that narrator, what always been interesting to me is that he’s this pretty normal, cynical guy, and then you feel implicated by the end of it.  

CP: Yeah, you like him. Or identify with him. 

RLR: Or at least I knew him. You know, that’s Tom, he runs the liquor store and he’s kind of gruff. 

CP: Yeah, and it’s not a slow burn either: it’s verse one, verse two, and then murder. I coulda added something else in there, I guess, to work you up to that. [Laughs] 

RLR: Hey, there’s time; songs are never finished, Charlie.

CP: Right, right. Well, I had attempted to write a book and the book was basically that story, except it was fleshed out and long. And when the book turned out to be a horrible, horrible book, that song was distilled out of that story. 

RLR: Do you write in other forms other than songs on a regular basis or find other ways to be creative? 

CP: I write quite a bit. I like writing in a more essay form. I like writing little vignettes–not even short stories, just fragments of things. For a long time, I’ve wanted to to work on that and work it into something else, even just for me. 

As part of my therapy for depression, I watercolor these silly pictures of dinosaurs. Not good ones either but ever since I was a kid, I would comfort myself by drawing these discordant scenes with dinosaurs. When I was really little, they always had airplanes in the sky. Now I’ve found that’s comforting again, I just do poorly done watercolors of dinosaurs walking around.  

RLR: How it is helpful to you?

CP: For me, an episode of depression doesn’t look like sadness. It’s more related to an anxiety disorder, because it’s accompanied by some physical things, like tunnel vision, a balance problem, and the usual complete lack of motivation, can’t really taste food, just a really foggy feeling. And you just get myopic. If I feel an episode like that coming on and I sit and do a little doodle or piece of painting, especially with watercolor, because I don’t know how to do it so I don’t feel like I have control over it. For some reason that calms my mind. I can do that for an hour or two and I can actually feel myself letting go and the episode will begin to pass. That’s been a technique I’ve used now for a couple of years. Even on the road I have a little pad, and I’ll just sit and doodle. I listen to a lot of experimental music and for some reason, I’m not even sure why, it helps me to refocus my mind. I can kind of ease my way out of these episodes, whereas three years ago, I was a victim of it. I could feel the episodes coming on, but I was just victimized by it, and they led to this dark, really bad ending every single time, so finding a little way to lead myself out of it has been a big deal to me. 

RLR: I feel like it’s so important to share these ideas, Charlie. They can be a lifeline to people, and it might not work for everyone, but silence sure doesn’t help. 

CP: We’ve lost at least three people in the last three months to suicide, and we need to just talk and share stuff. I have this little thing that works for me, and sometimes it doesn’t, but at least I’m saying something about it, especially in this culture where people are afraid to say vulnerable things about themselves, for whatever reason. If we all said the vulnerable things about ourselves, it might wake people up a bit. 

 

Go see Charlie Parr. Buy this record, not because he fell off a skateboard, but because it’s damn good. Charlie is playing at The Cat’s Cradle on October 10 and you can see a full slate of tour dates here. 

 

We talked a lot about mental health, depression, and suicide, so you should know about backline, a new initiative for improving mental health in the music industry. 

 

If you are thinking about suicide, are worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, available 24/7 across the United States: 1-800-273-TALK. 

 

 

Photo Credit: Graham Tolbert