Folk/blues singer/songwriter Charlie Parr will release his highly-anticipated album Little Sun on Friday (March 22). The album marks a major shift in Parr’s approach to recording. Until now, he recorded albums solo and left the mistakes and rough edges in the final product. This time, though, he worked with producer Tucker Martine and a group of other musicians to create a fuller-sounding and more polished album.
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Ahead of the release of Little Sun, Parr sat down with American Songwriter to talk about the recording process and more.
Charlie Parr’s Career Came Full Circle
Smithsonian Folkways released Parr’s 2021 album Last of the Better Days Ahead and will release Little Sun. However, his connection to the label goes much deeper.
He discovered his love of folk and blues music at the age of eight. As a child, he would go to his local public library and check out stacks of Folkways records every week. The label helped expand his musical knowledge and, later, the artists on those records shaped his sound. Now that he’s on the label, he says it feels like things have come full circle.
“It’s ridiculous,” he said when asked how it felt to have albums released by the legendary label. “This is my second Folkways release. I would not have predicted in a million years that I would get to know those folks and they’d put out two records that I did,” he added.
“The feeling that I have being on the label is ethereal. They’ve been amazing to me,” he said of working with the label that helped spark his love of music. “And I think when I got the call that they were interested, I’m sitting down on my living room floor surrounded by all the Folkways records in my collection just thinking ‘This has been part of my life since I was eight years old.’”
Parr Finds a New Way of Doing Things…For Now
Parr also spoke about his drastic change in recording styles going into Little Sun. When asked why he did things differently this time, he said he let the songs lead him.
“I needed to do something different,” he said. Then, about the rough and raw quality of his last album, he said, “The record before this, honestly, was recorded in about the time it took to play the songs. I will defend that record all day long. I love it. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. That’s just the way those songs were supposed to be presented.” However, that wasn’t the case this time.
“These songs, they felt different. They felt like they were going to need a little more. I’ve never done this before. I suppose I could have but I didn’t. I’ve never gotten to go to a studio, work with a producer, have other musicians there, think hard about decisions, spend days in the studio,” he revealed. “I spent a week in Portland with Tucker Martine. It was a whole new world to me to keep at something for more than a day. It felt really good to me.”
Then, he took a moment to praise Martine for his work on the record. “Tucker Martine’s amazing. He became a good friend and I love the other work that he’s done in his career. So, if there was anybody I was going to hand over part of my creative life to, I think that was a good choice,” he said.
When asked if he would continue to record this way in the future, Parr said he’d let the next batch of songs guide him.
Charlie Parr’s Little Sun will hit streaming platforms and record store shelves on March 22.
Featured Image by Shelly Mosman
