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 HEIDI LEIGH AXTON chats with folk artist CHARLIE PARR about fishing boat engines, his latest tour and dealing with the unexpected when field recording.
Usually when you ask musicians what set them on the path to musical discovery they’ll share stories of the first guitar dad bought them or the day Grandma gave them piano lessons. For Charlie Parr it was neither of these things. It all started in the spring of 1979, when a young Parr ambled down to the Austin Lake with a 9.9 outboard boat motor. He didn’t have a boat, but what did that matter?
“A 9.9 is a classic outboard fishing motor. It’s the Holy Grail of outboard boat motors, so even if you don’t have a boat, if you have a Johnson 9.9, you’re going to want to hold onto it,” he laughs.
Eventually, however, Parr saw sense and traded it to a truckie for an old Gibson 12-string Guitar. Did he know he had musical ability when agreeing to trade? “No, but I listen to music all the time. I’ve listened to music ever since I was a baby and my dad used to play records in our house constantly. I grew up with music, but I struggled with it for a long time. It’s still a process for me.”
Many will remember Parr from the support tour with Paul Kelly. Has he been looking forward to returning here? “I’m really looking forward to it. I loved being in Australia when I was there before. I got to be there for almost six weeks. Twenty days with Paul and then a couple of weeks on my own. I had an amazing time. I’m really looking forward to getting back. Even though it’s going to be kind of warm I hear. I’m going to look for some short sleeved t-shirts.”
Available for sale will be his latest album Roustabout, recorded at a variety of locations to give it a live ambience. Parr is happy with the sound. “It was recorded over a year ago now. We did it more or less as a field recording. It was done in a few different locations around Minnesota using a Nagra single-track field recorder and a single microphone with a true mono one track line all the way to the finished product. I was really happy to be able to record that way. It was a really easy comfortable way to record.”
As he explains though, there has been the occasional hiccup. “With recording nothing goes to plan. It’s like putting an alternator in a car. Nothing ever works. You just have to go with it. So far I’ve been kind of using old equipment and not being in studios you fight with the weather, birds chirping, cars going by. During the recording of one of my records there’s a fellow driving around in a go-kart, back and forth up and down the alley next to the drive. That was kind of irritating. There’s always some weird little thing, but for the most part I’ve been pretty lucky. I’ve kept things simple enough so things go pretty smoothly.”
CHARLIE PARR PLAYS the Sound Lounge on Friday Jan 15 and also The Zoo on Saturday Jan 16. His new album ROUSTABOUT is out now through Level Two Music. www.myspace.com/charlieparr
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