Charlie Parr

blues · folk · americana

Charlie Parr is an American folk and country blues singer, guitarist and songwriter, born in 1967 in Austin, Minnesota, partly raised in nearby Hollandale, and long based in Duluth. His prewar-blues style draws on Charley Patton, Bukka White, Lead Belly, Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Dave Van Ronk and Lightnin' Hopkins, and he plays National and Mule resonator guitars, a twelve-string, harmonica and a fretless open-back banjo. After the death of Minnesota folk-blues elder Spider John Koerner in 2024, Koerner left Parr his twelve-string Gretsch with the request that he keep playing it on stage. Parr debuted with Criminals & Sinners in 2002 and has recorded since for Misplaced Music, Little Judges, Shaky Ray, Red House Records and Smithsonian Folkways, with Stumpjumper (2015) and Dog (2017) among the Red House titles. His song "1922" was licensed for Vodafone advertising in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, which built him an audience abroad, and he toured Australia with Paul Kelly in 2009; he is also a regular at festivals including Pickathon and Midwest Music Fest. A skateboarding accident with his daughter along Lake Superior on August 3, 2018 shattered his right shoulder and forced him to relearn the guitar, a rebuilding that shaped the writing on Last of the Better Days Ahead, released by Smithsonian Folkways in 2021 and accompanied by a book of the same title. Little Sun, his eighteenth album, arrived on Smithsonian Folkways in March 2024 and marked a deliberate break in method: produced by Tucker Martine at his Flora Recording and Playback studio in Portland, Oregon, it was the first Parr album not cut in a single live take. He performs solo, and his shows lean on long, worked-over versions of traditional material alongside his own songs.

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