In the music of Charlie Parr, there is a sincere conviction and earnest drive to create. The Minnesota-born guitarist, songwriter, and interpreter of traditional music has released 19 albums over two decades and has been known to perform up to 275 shows a year. Parr is a folk troubadour in the truest sense: taking to the road between shows, writing and rewriting songs as he plays, fueled by a belief that music is eternal and cannot be claimed or adequately explained. The bluesman poet pulls closely from the sights and sounds around him, his lyrical craftsmanship built by his influences. The sounds from his working-class upbringing—including Folkways legends such as Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie—imbue Parr’s music with stylistic echoes of blues and folk icons of decades past. Parr sees himself merely as a continuer of a folk tradition: “I feel like I stand on a lot of big shoulders,” he said in an interview. “I hope that I’ve brought a little bit of myself to the music.” With a discography simultaneously transcendental in nature and grounded in roots music, Charlie Parr is the humble master of the 21st century folk tradition. Parr started recording in Duluth in 2002, where he lives today. Life in the port town on Lake Superior has a way of bleeding into his work the same way his childhood in Austin, Minnesota does. Parr self-released his debut album, Criminals and Sinners, and did the same for his sophomore album 1922 (2002). With growing popularity abroad, Parr signed with Red House Records in 2015, where he recorded break-out albums Stumpjumper (2015) and Dog (2017). Parr’s music has an overwhelming sense of being present and mindful, and his sound is timeless. Parr’s mastery of his craft is only more apparent when contextualized within the history of folk tradition of which Parr has dedicated his practice The land and lives around and intersecting with Parr have always influenced him, from the hills and valleys of Hollandale, Minnesota to the Depression-era stories from his father. Parr strives to listen to everything: “I don’t see that I’d ever be capable of creating anything if it weren’t for these inspirations and influences, books and music as well as the weather and random interactions with strangers and animals. So, the well never runs dry as long as my eyes and ears are open,” Parr said in a 2020 interview. Before he was even 10 years old Parr was rummaging through his father’s record collection—sometimes drawing dinosaurs on the vinyl sleeves—and listening to country, folk, and blues legends, many of whom are staples in the Folkways catalog. When Parr sings and plays his resonator or 12-string, you can hear influences like Mance Lipscomb, Charley Patton, Spinder John Koerner, Rev. Gary Davis, and Dock Boggs. This is especially true in his playing, when, after a diagnosis of focal dystonia, Parr turned to greats like Davis, Doc Watson, and Booker White for two-finger picking inspiration. Gifted a 1965 Gibson B-45 12-string by his father, Parr has never had a formal lesson and learned by to listening records and watching musicians he admired. Parr’s first album with Smithsonian Folkways, Last of Better Days Head (2021), foregrounded his lyrical craftsmanship and sophisticated bluesman confidence, with spare production highlighting Parr’s mastery of guitar and elevating his poetry. Last of Better Days Ahead is a portrait of how Parr saw the world in that moment, reflecting on time and memories that have past while holding an enduring desire to be present. In his 2024 release, Little Sun, Parr weaves together stories celebrating music, community, and communing with nature. Putting forth an ambitious and raw album that exemplifies the best of Parr's sound: a blend of the blues and folk traditions he continues to carry with him and the steadfast originality of a poet.   The accident on August 3, 2018 could have put an end to Parr’s career. Only a month earlier he had made his first appearance at the Newport Folk Festival, bookending a summer year of touring and career highpoints. Then, while skateboarding with his daughter along Lake Superior, he hit pavement. His right shoulder was busted into pieces and his ability to play guitar on stage again was suddenly in question. But, when playing the guitar is intertwined with who you are, not playing really isn’t an option.   He underwent surgery that left him with a metal plate and eight pins holding his reconstructed shoulder together. Within days, as soon as he could tabletop his guitar across his lap, Parr was playing again. Three weeks later he made a pain-filled return to the stage with an appearance on the Live from Big Top Chautauqua radio show.   “It’s the defining thing in my life,” Parr says. “When you think about yourself, you think, ‘That’s what I am. I’m the guy that plays guitar.’ So what happens when that gets stripped out? If there’s any way you can keep doing it, you’re going to keep on.”   But not everything returned to the way it was; his outlook had been altered.    “I’m not really that interested in careerism,” Parr says. “Part of the effect of the accident was a reaffirming of what’s really important to me. That’s not a music career, it’s just making music. That’s what counts the most — having pure motives and loving intention.”   By the time Parr hit the road again, he was reinvigorated to play music in a way he had not been for some time. He started digging out songs from early in his career.   “I can revisit any of them I want and meditate on what it was like to be seven years old again, curious about the guitar, obsessed with music and hoarding bike parts,” he says.  “I can relive all the joyful times I had with my friends and family. I can grieve all over again my Dad’s passing; I can feel my stomach turn at the mountains of regret that I’ve amassed and the people I’ve hurt when I’ve been too self-absorbed to take better care of my actions, but I can’t change it.    “Songs are a different kind of history though, they’re not subject to the rules of time, they never died and they never will, and they grow and evolve right along with the rest of me.”    Parr had never really stopped playing those songs completely and, along the way, they had matured along with him. He wanted a chance to record them again to capture what they had become.    “I recorded some of those songs almost 20 years ago and, when I think about what my mind was like at that time, it’s not what it is now,” he explains. “In a way, I’ve been re-writing them over and over again for the past two decades.” “Cheap Wine” is a new recording of a longtime audience favorite, a sinister narrative sung from the point of view of a liquor store owner with a dark secret who’s starting to crack. The plotline came from an idea for a novel that Parr eventually abandoned and mined for song ideas,   “Twenty-five Forty-one” is a cover by the late Grant Hart, one-third of seminal Twin Cities punk rock band Husker Du. Charlie’s poignant take on the track is a moving testament to Hart’s underrated songwriting skills. Another cover finds Parr covering his idol, Minnesota folk blues legend Spider John Koerner, with a blistering version of “Running Jumping Standing Still.”   “John is a true cipher in my mind, a living embodiment of the folk process,” Parr says. “This song has been one of my favorite songs ever since I first heard it.”   “On Stealing a Sailboat” is a new song, a “cautionary tale about choosing your friends wisely,” he deadpans.    By 2019, Parr is back on his grueling international tour schedule, mended and reinvigorated, covering the entire country alone in his car, occasionally cooking his vegan meals on his car manifold. It’s a lonely existence that leaves a lot of time for reflection and reminiscing. Charlie Parr is the first album -- and there are 13 others -- that Parr he felt like putting his name on. It’s a bit of the new, a bit of the old, and a bit of what’s motivated and moved him. Most importantly, it’s an audio tour of his life and career to date and a celebration of more songs and stories to come.

Bad Posture Club is a queer folk duo made up of Maren Day and Morgan Kavanagh. Originally from Northwestern Washington, they've toured nationally, as well as spent formative years in the Midwest music scene. Together they craft intricate and experimental harmonies with their two voices, banjo, guitar, and a 100 year old pump organ. Bad Posture Club invites the listener to hear the power in quiet, intimate music, and offers warmth and reflection through song.