Charlie Parr @ The EastBrunswick Club, Melbourne(23/09/2010)

Fri 8th Oct, 2010 in Gig Reviews

East Brunswick Club was transformed from a small corner pub into something out of a country and western movie. I felt like I had walked into that last pub on the side of the highway situated somewhere in the deep south of America that was filled by the 30 residents that live near by, named something like Nancy-jean or Donny-ray and all the truck drivers that happen to pit stop in this nowhere town on the side of the road to somewhere else.

The crowd wore flannel shirts, leather jackets, and trucker hats covering the silver-stricken hair. This was a family affair as 3 generations gathered, cheered each other with cheap beer and grunt in some kind of sub-English language while they waited for Charlie Parr to come play.

Parr meandered on stage and as he began to perform, the music floated through the long band room and the shorter of the human species- namely me – strained to see the front of the stage. His voice was powerful and rumbled like a freight train filling the room with music laden heavily with a country drawl so intense you could almost imagine a full band backing up his powerful voice.

I attempted to push through the crowd, wanting to gasp a clear vision of the stage but the crowd were like Gibraltar; unmoving and stern allowing me only to glance at a small bald patch at the top of Charlie’s head that seemed to glimmer as it caught the light from time to time. When I finally chiselled my way to the front of the stagnant crowd, I saw one man perched on a small stool hunched over a guitar. It was hard to believe that his name could be attributed to the sound I had previously heard but then, he started to sing. The deep southern blues danced through my ear-drums as Parr swapped and changed from banjo to guitar. His fingers operated the guitar strings in the same vein a 50-year-old secretary operates a typewriter, plucking at his instruments on some weird kind of autopilot at a speed that is near-impossible to master yet looked as simple as drawing a breath.

Charlie Parr’s music is like his appearance; simple rough around the edges but with an underlying essence of still wisdom. He spoke through his songs like we were engaged in conversation at the pub after a 60-hour week at work. He felt no need for poetry and fancy lyrics and simply stated what was on his mind. He engaged the audience between tunes with short stories about his life, entertaining the crowd with anecdotes about his midlife crisis, his wife pushing weights and his inability to cut his hair.

He has recently toured Australia with Paul Kelly and released 6 full length albums in his rather productive career. In Australia to promote the latest of those, When the Devil Goes Blind , he played several songs off the album; the most memorable being Maston, Jesse James and Up Country Blues, as well as songs from older albums like Jubilee.

When the Devil Goes Blind is a powerful album and well worth a listen. It will transport you to a place where hay chewing, tobacco spitting and ‘yee harr-ing’ is all run of the mill.

CHECK OUT PHOTOS FROM THE NIGHT HERE