Backroads is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund.

With money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008.

Well, money can't buy back that '64 Falcon that you sold in your 20s then regretted it was gone cause you thought it contained meaning or some answers to a life and you never bothered to question or even take a good close look at.

And it broke your heart to see how it had been so important from the feeling of the steering wheel to the rubber on the road and now it's grown to unrealistic proportions in your mind.

No you're in your 50's why can't you forget how the chrome bumpers shined in the sun and if you could just go back even for a minute you could forget how you don't even know what it was you lost.

Why you always feel so empty in spite of all you have with those feelings you remember even real and were they honestly about some junky old Falcon any other thing that you could own.

Because now it's all so stale and you feel so very old like you've taken all your chances and tossed them all aside for the line the stolen nest of a greedy neighborhood crow.

So, you drive back to your hometown to visit with your old past but nothing looks the same anymore and you can see all that just squandered while you were shining all that chrome.

You were handed all you needed without cost but you were too blind to see it and you took now you wanna complain tell me just what it was that you lost.

Well now you start to panic and your gas is running low and you need to find some meaning before you're stranded on the road and when the engine finally dies near a soybean field at dusk you just sit and watch the sunset turn the entire sky to rust.

Turn the entire sky to rust.

Turn the entire sky to rust.

My name is Charlie Parr.

I write songs in a tradition of folk music that probably started happening around the turn of the last century.

I've liked music all my life and I've liked a lot of different kinds of music but the kind of music that I wanted to play was very specific.

At the point that this music was initially recorded, you know, genres didn't make sense.

They didn't really exist, you know, these folks would have called themselves musicianers, you know, solo guitar players could play a lot of different things.

Play with their fingers usually, that's what inspired me to play but I'm also inspired and influenced by a lot of different kinds of music.

It was a bleak summer night and I was walking no particular place to go.

I walk in circles come right back to the place I was at before.

It was hot and it had been raining humid at 2 AM.

The streets were wet and the grass was soaking I had no dry place to lay my head.

And deep blue fell from the night sky, bleached to grey under the overhead lamps.

And all the shadows were three dimensions like you could crawl right inside and camp.

When I heard music down the avenue, cut right through the traffic sounds.

Harsh and sweet oh at the same time I hurried to follow it down.

I stopped outside a grey house near the alley and I found my way down to the sound.

I could hear the music clearly I lay myself out on the ground.

I was taken to meet the devil and I trembled in the pouring rain and I took a ride in a fast car, with a woman named Betty Mae.

I woke up to the blues they were walking blues walking like a man.

I was a bar-room clown, I was stumbling, stones all in my path.

I carried my baby's suitcase to the waiting train while the blues fell down just like rain, just like rain, just like rain.Just like rain, just like rain.

Just like rain.

Fell down just like Well, in my house when I was young music played whenever my dad was home and so we had this massive console stereo and the records.

It was it was a shambolic record collection.

I mean it was just a mess of whatever and he didn't know half the records that he had.

He didn't really understand how he got them.

He just had them and there they were.

So, he'd grab a stack and then in those days you know the record player had this the big spindle and the thing that came over and he'd put a stack of records on this thing and it would just play through.

They'd drop, you know, when the record came the automatic changer would drop the next one and so records would just play all the time and it was both background music to our lives and it was also like I as a six, five, six year old person was paying attention to it because my little area that I played in was in front of those big tower speakers that we had and certain records just jumped out at me and if they jumped out at me hard enough I would go running over because the covers were all destroyed because of me being, you know, a little kid.

I found that if I split the record cover open then I would have this big expansive area to draw pictures of dinosaurs on which is what I did and my dad wasn't a precious person.

He liked the records.

He didn't really care what the cover looked like.

He would take the stack of records off the turntable either flip them over and put them back on or you just like throw them back on the pile.

So, if I really like something I'd run over and like look at it while it was going around try to see who it was.

I just listened, you know, whether anybody else was listening or not and I don't remember talking about it too much with anybody until at one point when I was almost eight years old I said I want to play like that.

I want to play something.

I couldn't imagine what it was that Mance Lipscomb must be doing to be able to play like that but I wanted to try it and dad got me a guitar and I sat in front of the speakers instead of with toys.

I sat there with a guitar and retuning it until it sounded kind of like the speakers sounded and then I'd try to play along and I'm sure it was terrible and that's what I still do.

The steeple in the distance is lit by a neon cross.

The steeple in the distance is lit by a neon cross.

But when he got to the door for mercy's sake, he found it to be locked.

Tony was a security office down at the trailer yard.

He lived in an abandoned reefer at the far end of the trailer lot.

He'd to come into town sometimes a stray dog trailing at his heels.

Tony coming into town sometimes a stray dog trailing at his heels.

All the stray dogs love Tony because he knows exactly He might ask you for some change lord knows he's a volunteer.

He might ask you for some change lord knows he's a volunteer.

Keep an eye out on his family all keeping all his close friends near.

I told him sleeping out on the cold ground Tony that's gonna wear your muscles out.

Sleeping out on the cold, cold ground Tony that's gonna wear your muscles out.

Ain't nothin' colder than that agent's heart that's kicking you off of that Willmar shot.

Tony says he'll tramp down south but no one's seen him make a move to leave.

Tony's says he'll tramp down south but no one's He just shrugs his shoulders and smiles he says how he's gonna catch out next spring.

Steeple in the distance lit by a neon cross.

Steeple in the distance that was lit by a neon cross.

But when he got to the door for mercy sake, he found it to be locked.

The new record was written in the very first months of the lockdown.

Once lockdown started I was off the road.

I hadn't been off the road in years.

So, suddenly I was just practicing and reading and starting to write.

When you're on the road a lot, you know, you don't have to think much about, you know, existential problems like I'm getting older.

What am I going to do?

You don't think about that stuff.

Suddenly you stop and you're like oh god, you know, what am I going to do?

Conversations with my mother about that and which were very helpful because she said well you can't let yourself think that way, you know, life is just this way.

She likened it to, you know, drifting along in a river in a boat and at one minute you're facing the future that's kind of fuzzy and the next minute you're facing the past which may or may not exist and so the whole record has got to do with, in one sense or another, just arriving at a place in life where I am that this kind of point of view was constantly kind of revolving around and what it does is it makes me think a lot more about the present moment than I've ever had in my life.

The present moment is paramount now and it didn't feel like it was before even though it should have been, you know, everybody says, you know, live in the moment but I haven't done that very well creating an environment where I can just exist right now feels really good to me and that's kind of what the record is about and the new record is called "The Last of the Better Days Ahead" which is definitely the very best title I've ever come up with for anything that I've ever done in my life.

Was that a phrase your mom said?

No.

That's something that just came out of my big stupid head man.

I just made that up.

Heading across the lake my little boat A surface of glass.

I am bound for a notch in the trees, rotting wooden steps.

It's difficult to see in the waning light northland's October evening.

Concentrate on the little pool of water the travels from bow to stern.

I have a small outboard lent to me by my uncle, need of slight repair.

It feels like it's taking forever to reach the farthest shore.

When I see a scrap of neon floating like a balloon recording the trees.

Concentrate on the darkening tree line, concentrate on the sinking dock.

I can hear voices from above me on the steepest part of the bank and I listen for the voice of my father in the midst of the There's a bar at the top of the staircase hidden in the leaves.

Concentrate on the face of my father, concentrate on the last shirt I saw him wear.

There's an aging fishing boat at the dock mostly sunk into the mud.

The steps are all but gone now rotten to my tread.

I cling to branches to keep from slipping.

The rain is coming on.

Concentrate on never falling, concentrate on never climbing back down.

When I was coming up in the 1970's, I had those few records in my dad's collection and no way to figure out what else was out there.

Go to the library, well the library in Austin, Minnesota where I grew up had an amazing record collection on the second floor and a lot of Smithsonian records.

The Harry Smith anthology was up there, a lot of records and I would go to the library and check out records and find those kind of currents and pathways that way.

We have YouTube now which is amazing because in the 70's when I was growing up, you know, I was trying to imagine what it looked like to see Mance Lipscomb play the guitar.

Well, there's films of him playing the guitar.

I didn't know that.

Nobody told me that.

There was no way that I could have seen those films until YouTube.

When you can like call it up and I can watch Mance Lipscomb play and realize that I've been doing it wrong all along but now I can't change it because I'm 54 years old, So, I'm just going to do it the way I do it but I think that technology is adding to folk music.Young musicians whether they consider themselves folk musicians or not, you know, who are taking ancient sounds and bringing them forward and adding things that they can add because of technology.

They're folk musicians and they're churning out a music that we haven't heard before because of technology and we have access to it that's unprecedented because of technology and well, you know, it's music.

It's eternal.

It's free.

It's supposed to be for all of us do do do do do do do do so I wish I was a jaybird with my pack on my back.

I wish I was a jaybird with my pack upon my back.

Fly from this town and I never would come back.

Backroads is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

With money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008.