Smithsonian Folkways Recording Artist Charlie Parr Set New Book 'Last of the Better Days Ahead,’ Oct 11

On October 11, Minnesota musician and Smithsonian Folkways Recording Artist Charlie Parr will release his first work of fiction through Southwestern Wisconsin-based Ramshackle Press. Readers are treated to a deep dive into the big picture of a group of Charlie’s songs. Like the old, well-hewn gospel songs, there is both darkness and light. There are tales of childhood, families, cantankerous uncles and aunts, and slightly lost individuals. Through keyholes opening into rays of light, the reader watches the lives of everyday humans unrolling in unheroic yet poetic and unvarnished ways that those that love Parr’s songs will cherish. As Abraham Smith writes in the book’s introduction, “It's a great plenty and promises plenty more. I know I feel a delicious undertow on the final page; can't wait to start again at word one; and then to find a good walking stick for Charlie's next river road of Prose.” Parr’s last record “'Last of the Better Days Ahead'" (2021) on Smithsonian Folkways was what he referred to as a way of looking back while looking ahead. A transposing of his mom’s observation on mid-life as "a time when we turn from gazing into the future to gazing back at the past, as if we’re adrift in the current, slowly turning around."

Many folks across the country, and in Europe and Australia, have had the chance to stomp their foot, share in some folk wisdom, and usually get a chuckle or two at a Charlie Parr show. There is a reverence for his music, and certainly a reverence for the slight, bespectacled hobo-philosopher that tugs at the heartstrings through his stories and observations on life. With personal takes on gospel and blues standards, and a suitcase full of his own songs, what emerges for many people, is a kind of full-blown mythic Charlie Parr. Yet, Charlie himself keeps breaking the ice with his honesty and self-deprecating humor. A show becomes a gaze into Charlie’s real or imagined world and at the same time a kind of staring into oneself. An experience that more than one person has called “their version of going to church.”

Parr’s last record “'Last of the Better Days Ahead'" (2021) on Smithsonian Folkways was what he referred to as a way of looking back while looking ahead. A transposing of his mom’s observation on mid-life as "a time when we turn from gazing into the future to gazing back at the past, as if we’re adrift in the current, slowly turning around."

Parr himself has discussed the productive time the forced separation of the past couple of years was for him, a respite from traveling and the challenges of living life on the road. What came about was a process where his usual sketches for songs, a kind of big picture story that becomes winnowed down in words and slowly unspooled through different sittings with the guitar, had the time to solidify and grow. The sketched stories became songs as usual, but this time Parr went back after the album was cut and began to hone the stories like he had the Songs.

In the book's prologue, Parr notes that the stories are not autobiographical, something that many folks have thought about his songs. “I made all these stories up, they’re not factual. They are, however, very much real. What I mean is that the people are composites of people I’ve known, and the places are misremembered places of where I’m from and where I’ve been.” Through a series of releases over the past few years, Ramshackle Press has painted a picture of the Upper Midwest music scene and the strong writing tradition behind the region’s best musicians. With books by Palmer T. Lee (The Lowest Pair), Sarah Vos (Dead Horses) forthcoming, Bret Rodysill (A Record Summer) and Brett Newski, the little press has built on long-held relationships in the music community. The latest book by Charlie Parr “'Last of the Better Days Ahead' (OCT 2022) is no exception, surfacing after years of friendly banter about working on a book together.

Release date: October 11, 2022

'Last of the Better Days Ahead'

Charlie Parr

120 pages

ISBN: 979-8-218-03893-9

Ramshackle Press

Price: $20

Book is available at Charlie Parr shows, select bookstores, and through the Ramshackle Press

website: www.ramshacklepress.org

For more information on Smithsonian Folkways, contact Hannah Schwartz (hschwartz@shorefire.com) or Luke Garcia (lgarcia@shorefire.com).