King Earl by Charlie Parr
"I’d been playing the songs that made up King Earl for a while, they were culled from a failure of a short piece of fiction of the same name and the rest of the songs mined from that little book were used later for the Rooster album. So I’d been playing them for some time live and they were as familiar and realized as they could be at that point in time. The session was a show with no audience, we recorded live to the microphones and tape machine, barely letting the room go quiet before we started the next song. Every single step of the process (mixing, mastering, artwork, what have you) took longer than the actual recording session. I haven’t strayed too far from that model to this day, preferring to capture a moment rather than create one and let the listener use this captive, this shadow of an evening, to create their own moment."
King Earl is currently the featured download on the website; check out this page for a bonus download and more: http://www.charlieparr.com/download.html
Reviews
"There's splashes of instrumental brilliance the equal of Leo Kottke's 6 & 12 string, but really it's Parr's corruscating attack of a voice, heading down that dusty gravel road which raises the stakes here. As serious as your life, and twice as exciting - what a discovery." - Boomkat
"In an age of commercialism and celebrity and the turn of a quick buck, the soul saving melodies of Parr are like a breath of fresh air, timeless and majestic, princely and magnificent. If anything King Earl is a more rootsy and dusty affair than its predecessor, these square jawed gems have been blended from the finest ingredients and left to mature in oak wood casks until fit to burst." - Losing Today
Tracklist
| 1. | Worried Blues | 4:03 |
| 2. | Possessed By The Devil | 5:28 |
| 3. | Union Tramp | 3:06 |
| 4. | Reverend's Eviction Blues | 4:28 |
| 5. | Miner's Lament | 4:06 |
| 6. | V8 Ford Blues part 2 | 6:08 |
| 7. | King Earl | 4:25 |
| 8. | Ode to a New Dealer | 4:17 |
| 9. | Mule Rider | 2:28 |
| 10. | 1917 | 4:02 |
| 11. | Jefferson Street Express | 4:19 |
| 12. | West Bank 10 String Rag | 2:52 |
| 13. | Worried Blues | 3:39 |
Credits
Guitar [National Steel Guitar, 12-string], banjo, vocals – Charlie Parr
Washboard, percussion – Mikkel Beckmen
Theremin – Christian McShane
Engineer – Jake Larson
Mixed and mastered by Tom Herbers
Album design and photography by Christian McShane
All songs by Charlie Parr except tracks 1, 5, & 13 trad. arr. Parr
License
All rights reserved.
"Parr is scruffy and uncomfortable looking, with a longish beard and balding head. He dropped out of high school in the 1980s, but he looks older than that. He's pathologically deadpan in his delivery of in between song banter. The crowd really enjoyed his depressingly hilarious dead cat story. He never smiles." - Lucy Steigerwald
TOUR DATES: http://www.charlieparr.com/shows.html