Charlie Parr’s Tiny Things
It’s Lizzie No speaking to you from Dublin, Ireland, where I recently moved! It’s fall here which makes my mind wander back to my home state of origin, New Jersey, where leaves are undoubtedly changing and cider donuts are being consumed. I hope you’re enjoying autumn wherever you are.
This summer I said goodbye to Nashville, Tennessee, where I had been living for the past three years. I also worked on a bunch of projects, rehomed my beloved foster dog Dino, and prepared myself logistically to move to a new country. I don’t think it was possible to prepare myself emotionally, but the paperwork is done, thank god. I’m mentioning all of this from my desk in Dublin because it’s hitting me how quickly a transition period can become a major chapter of your life, how quickly a temporary living situation can become home, and how all of a sudden things that felt permanent have become memories.
This leads me to my interview with Minnesota folk singer Charlie Parr, whose new album, Rooming House, comes out on Smithsonian Folkways on October 16. Rooming House is an emotionally impactful musical story in seven acts. Like a lot of Charlie Parr’s music, this album feels like a play where the stakes feel so real that you can’t help but walk away more empathetic for having experienced it. The setting is a rooming house, and the characters are the folks from young to old who have been thrown together by circumstance. It’s the type of brilliantly observed story-album that we are lucky enough to get when imaginative artists from working class backgrounds have the courage to tell stories.
In addition to being a prolific songwriter, Charlie Parr is a fabulous guitar player and student of the blues, so our conversation covers some of his musical backstory in addition to a discussion of the album. On a personal note, in 2020 I made an exhaustive cross-genre list of the songs from the decade of the 2010s which had been most important to me, and Charlie Parr’s “Cheap Wine” came in at #1. His songs have accompanied me through a lot of life changes, so today is a big day for me, and a big day for Basic Folk.day for Basic Folk.
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Before I let you listen to my conversation with this contemporary heavyweight of folk music, I want to read you a passage from Charlie’s written accompaniment to ‘Rooming House:’
Tiny things are important. You could say that the tiniest things are the most important things of all. What are you made of? Tiny things. This record is a tiny thing, too. And meaningless, in its way. But I did it anyway, because I felt like I needed to do something. Because I felt helpless. I thought, “Well, I’ll just do this, then.” It must happen all the time. This must happen more often than we’d like to think. Listen: in an emergency I’m sure I’d know what to do. In the moment, some kind of overdrive will kick in, some hidden well of powerful strength. Mothers-lifting-cars kind of strong. Mothers-doing-mother-things kind of strong. In a crisis, I mean, not every day. I’m not strong every day like mothers are strong every day. But mothers have even more strength ready, in an emergency, you know. What is the emergency though? I’m not trapped under a car. Maybe I’m sick. Maybe it’s not obvious to anyone else. But it’s still a crisis. I’ve heard people say, in all seriousness, that if they were in jail at least they’d be warm. I know people who can’t afford to see a doctor. I’ve heard people say, “She doesn’t look sick.” Or “I’ve never heard of that.” Point to a part of your body to show where it hurts but it’s inside where your finger can’t point to. Ask someone to look where you’re pointing. These folks here, in this record, have no idea what’s wrong. Or how to help. They are sick with the longing to make everything better. And they can’t. Tiny things are important. This house could be anywhere. These things could happen to anyone. There is only one thing. Is that naive? I don’t care. There is only one thing.