All Ages
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Beloved Minnesota songwriting troubadour Charlie Parr doesn’t have dental insurance, like so many in the United States. So when he needed dental work, he had to figure out how to respond to a hefty bill. “You know, I’ve got a few guitars and a big record collection, so I started selling stuff off to be able to pay off this dental bill because I had to get them fixed.” This experience inspired him to start writing the song cycle and as-yet-unfinished novella that became Rooming House, a conceptual folk opera that chronicles the lives of Upper Midwesterners through his quietly raucous, deeply rooted, and empathetic blues sound.
When Parr first moved to Minneapolis from Austin in the 1980s, he lived in rooming houses. “I loved them so much. I really did. It was just a really interesting, wonderful bunch of people that I got to know. It felt like this strange family. You had a cross-section of everybody in these houses.” Parr’s lyrics ensure that you can picture these people and spaces—the shared kitchens, the makeshift family, the efforts to keep warm. The first single “Rooming House” sets the scene, with imagery and detail that one can clearly picture.
These are indelible songs of lost memories and hardship, but also of acts of empathy and helping neighbors make do; of taking each other in. “The characters in the songs all along have been loosely based on composites of people I’ve met,” says the songwriter. “I got to think about those folks. I don’t remember anybody ever not using the free clinic, which doesn’t exist anymore,” he remembers. He writes in a poem included as liner notes, “These folks here, in this record, have no idea what’s wrong. Or how to help. I know people who can’t afford to see a doctor. I’ve heard them talking about ‘toughing it out,’ or seeking advice about home remedies that will never work. I have a friend who knows someone who does his own dental work.”
For instance, the character John, an orphan whose story Parr builds throughout Rooming House, tries home remedies in the album’s second single, “(what’s so funny about) Universal Healthcare?” When they don’t work, decides to get caught robbing a bank (“Bank Robber”), figuring there are doctors in jail. He hands the teller a note that reads, “I’m sick and I’m tired and I only want some peace.” In the lush and light “Duluth 2026,” the cops take him back to the rooming house and charges aren’t pressed.
Living in a rooming house on Minneapolis’ West Bank, Parr would see local legends Dave Ray, “Spider” John Koerner, or Willie Murphy any night of the week. He soaked up an earthy, blues-driven sound. He plays a modified Gretsch twelve-string guitar that belonged to Koerner (tuned to either open C or standard) as well as a nine-string Mule resonator on two songs (tuned to open D). Of the resonator, he says, “It gives you this Big Joe Williams kind of jangly, weird, slightly off-kilter vibe.”
To depict characters who had to improvise their health care and lives, Parr decided that a more spontaneous recording approach made sense. Jazz drummer Dave King (The Bad Plus, Happy Apple) accompanied him on the sessions, putting Parr’s guitar and King’s drums in musical dialogue. Each recorded take differed.
The narrative thread takes a breather with the twangy and hysterical “(what’s so funny about) Universal Health Care?” Yet even that song is from the main character’s point of view.
Rolling Stone has called Parr’s music “a gritty blend of Delta blues and Depression-era roots music soaked in his hardscrabble voice. It’s a sacred realm of folk wisdom and sorrowful vulnerability.” NPR said he offers “expertly-picked resonator guitar and lyrics that puncture the soul.” Parr tours prolifically, and has performed at tastemaker events like the Newport Folk Fest and Pickathon.
The Duluth-based guitarist, songwriter, and interpreter of traditional music has released twenty albums over two-and-a-half decades and has been known to perform up to 275 shows a year. Parr is a folk troubadour in the truest sense: taking to the road between shows, writing and rewriting songs as he plays, fueled by a belief that music is eternal and cannot be claimed or adequately explained. The sounds from his working-class upbringing—including Folkways legends such as Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie—imbue Parr’s music with stylistic echoes of blues and folk icons of decades past. Parr sees himself merely as a continuer of a folk tradition.
Parr’s mastery of his craft is only more apparent when contextualized within the history of folk tradition to which Parr has dedicated his practice. The land and lives around and intersecting with Parr have always influenced him, from the hills and valleys of Hollandale, Minnesota to the Depression-era stories from his father.
Before he was even ten years old, Parr was rummaging through his father’s record collection—sometimes drawing dinosaurs on the vinyl sleeves—and listening to country, folk, and blues legends, many of whom are staples in the Folkways catalog. When Parr sings and plays his resonator or 12-string, you can hear influences like Koerner, Mance Lipscomb, Charley Patton, Rev. Gary Davis, Dock Boggs, Doc Watson, and Booker White.
Parr’s first album with Smithsonian Folkways, Last of the Better Days Ahead (2021), foregrounded his lyrical craftsmanship and sophisticated bluesman confidence, with spare production highlighting Parr’s mastery of guitar and elevating his blues poetry. In his 2024 release, Little Sun, Parr weaved together stories celebrating music, community, and communing with nature. In doing so, he put forth an ambitious and raw album that exemplifies the best of Parr’s sound: his blend of the blues and folk traditions with the steadfast originality of a poet. Now, he continues that tradition with 2026’s poignant and timely Rooming House, which joins the chorus of WPA-era socially-conscious folk operas and outlaw country concept albums of the 1970s to poignantly allegorize his experiences and the experiences of the people around him.
