Friday, January 22, 2010

Country Folk Blues - Courtesy of Charlie Parr

A rare musical treat at lunchtime today was seeing Charlie Parr perform his brand of country blues at Basement Discs.

I originally saw him in April last year, during his first Australian tour. Since then he has released a new CD, “Roustabout”, and has returned to these shores to promote it. A popular artist, after this January tour, he will be back for the Music Festivals in March and April.

Alternating between banjo and his National Resonator guitar Charlie entertained the larger than usual audience with renditions of several old blues and folk songs, some of them sourced from the
Harry Smith Project Anthology.

He is a wonderful musician and his voice has an attractive old fashioned nasal quality that gives you with the impression that you have travelled way beyond the streets of Melbourne and are holed up somewhere in some Minnesota backwoods, if such a thing exists in Minnesota, which where Charlie resides.

All in all a highly enjoyable mini concert.

The below photo is one Charlie obligingly posed for whilst I was getting him to sign my copy of 'Roustabout'.

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