Folk guitarist Charlie Parr is next up on the roster of musicians coming to Grand Forks for the North Dakota Museum of Art Concert in the Garden series. His 6 p.m. Tuesday show will be a return visit after a successful show here last summer.
"Charlie played last year and drew from all around the region," said Matt Wallace of the NDMOA. "He comes out of Duluth and has a wide and eclectic fan base."
He's touring with My Two Toms, a United Kingdom group he met while touring in Europe.
Parr grew up in Austin, Minn., in a house filled with the music that would inform his style, according to his biography. His late father loved the music Alan Lomax released on the Folkways/Smithsonian label and Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music."
His father's first-hand accounts of growing up during the Depression, riding the freight trains and traveling to places like the Piedmont region (a North Carolina country blues mecca), made the music all the more visceral to his son.
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Parr picked up the guitar when he was about 8 year old, but music lessons never held his interest. He's self-taught and brings his own twists to music, a news release said. Over the next decade-plus, Parr continued to hone his style and took up songwriting in earnest. Parr also earned a degree in philosophy and became an outreach worker for the homeless, working for The Salvation Army in Minneapolis. His experiences in social services can be heard in his songs, a news release said.
Fans know that Parr will show up with a lived-in rasp of a voice, National resonator and 12-string acoustic guitars, a banjo and a batch of his own songs plus numbers by Mississippi John Hurt, Charley Patton and others from another time.
At the Bath International Music Festival, a critic wrote of him: "Charlie Parr captures the intense sound of the folk music of America's frozen north. His raw voice, lightning finger picking and plaintive but wry songs have made him one of the most important contemporary protagonists of the American folk tradition."
His albums have received critical acclaim and have sold well into the thousands. He's toured the UK, Ireland and Scotland countless times, and practically everywhere in the U.S. He was a guest on "A Prairie Home Companion" (April 2004), starred in Travis Wilkerson's independent film, "Who Killed Cock Robin?" (2005), and contributed to the soundtrack, and has had his UK releases represented on the UK independent music charts. His music was featured on a PBS special (2004) and can be heard on radio stations throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Parr has lived in Duluth since 2000. In 2001 he released his debut CD, "Criminals & Sinners." Other releases are "1922" (2002), "King Earl" (2004) and "Rooster" (2005).
Tickets to the concert are $5 in advance, available at North Dakota Museum of Art. Call (701) 777-4195. At the door, they're $7. Children 12 and younger are free. Bring a lawn chair or blanket for seating. Food and beverages will be available for purchase.
