Peter Parcek is one of the most criminally underrated blues guitarists despite having earned a BMA nomination ten years ago. While folks like Joe Bonamassa, Walter Trout, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd get tons of ink, none of them have Parcek’s creativity, unpredictability, or his haunting, primal style. This writer calls Parcek’s brand “hard blues.”
If you’re new to him, you’ll hear it on Mississippi Suitcase. Here’s an excerpt from my review of his 2017 album Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven – “These are the hard blues. It’s not that Peter Parcek plays hard constantly but it’s the feeling he evokes. His alternating dynamics leave vapors of Hendrix and The Cream in his wake. He can play cleanly like [his hero, the late Peter Green], but prefers to shroud both his guitar sound and vocals with a haunting, voodoo shear. This is heavy stuff. So much so that Buddy Guy said “You’re as bad as Eric Clapton. And I know Eric Clapton.” That statement from Guy is more than telling, as Parcek’s sound on both the predecessor and this one recalls a similar feeling to Guy’s own North Mississippi Hill Country sound on Sweet Tea. Although, to be fair, Guy’s is hypnotic while Parcek here is wildly unleashed.
Parcek must also have impressed his guests Luther Dickinson, Spooner Oldham, and Mickey Raphael, all of whom return for this sizzling date. It reeks of more pain and turmoil than the last one as Parcek explains, “This album’s genesis is in profound personal and societal struggle. In recent years I’ve suffered an injury to my wrist and faced never playing again, and other personal challenges that shook me to the core. At the same time, the world has been in turmoil. All of that compelled me to reach as deeply within myself as I could to write about romance, sadness, struggle, and themes that are even, at times, apocalyptic, and to frame the songs I crafted and selected with arrangements and guitar sounds—at times deeply sweet and warm, at times granular and challenging—that helped breathe life into them”
His own opening “The World is Upside Down” is torn from today’s headlines, set to a propulsive groove and enflamed by grinding slide guitar and Hendrix-inspired solos—setting Parcek’s lyrics about existential chaos aflame. His take on Bob Dylan’s “Beyond Here Lies Nothing” is appropriately bittersweet, with his guitar painting atmospheric colors depicting the fragility of love. As he typically does, he nods to his time spent in London, with Green’s mystery-filled instrumental “The Supernatural.” When Peter Green cut the tune in 1967, as part of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Parcek was finding his way into the London blues scene, and the song has stuck with him ever since—although this is the first time he recorded it. It’s difficult to play but Parcek gives each note of the spare, beautiful melody room to breathe, his guitar soaring over clusters of perfectly controlled and tasteful feedback.
Parcek struggles with a broken heart on the funky “Mississippi Suitcase,” sparring with longtime collaborator, organist Tom West. He trades guitar lines with Luther Dickinson on New Orleans street singer Pleasant Joseph’s “Life is a One Way Ticket,” which also features harmonica legend Mickey Raphael blowing a mini hurricane, and gets downright filthy with Sonny Boy Williamson I’s slow burner “Until My Love Comes Down”— as guitarist “Scissorman” Ted Drozdowski duels with Parcek and West injects those swirling B3 fills as well as a killer solo. The leader turns Lou Reed’s “I’m Waiting for the Man” into a sonic, dizzying, psychedelic-blues excursion, with help from legendary Muscle Shoals organist Spooner Oldham.
P>Parcek is not shy about nodding to his influences, invoking Hendrix by attaching the parenthetical “Slight Return” to the epic incendiary title track. The oft-covered “Eleanor Rigby” takes on a psychedelic, other worldly instrumental sheen that becomes almost unrecognizable, save for reprises of its familiar chorus. Parcek’s core band of West, Carman and Hickox deliver two other soaring instrumentals – Frankie Lee Sims’ “She Likes To Boogie Real Low” and Parcek’s own closer “A Head Full of Ghosts,” emblematic of the slow burning “hard blues” ethereal sound he is known for.
The album was produced by Ducky Carlisle (Buddy Guy, Susan Tedeschi, William Bell) and Parcek, with additional production by frequent collaborator Marco Giovino, who produced the last one and drums on several tracks. Other musicians include some of Nashville’s best – bassists Dennis Crouch (Gregg Allman, Elvis Costello), Dominic Davis (Jack White) and Marc Hickox, and drummer Tim Carman.
Whether through his biting tone, sizzling chromatic runs, bent notes, or judicious use of effects his guitar alone is worth every minute of listening but add to that his weary, spooky voice and Parcek creates a singular sound unlike anyone else on today’s blues scene. His are the hard blues.
Photos by Margaret Lampert Photography
