Music review: Charlie Parr & JD Wilkes, CCA, Glasgow

IN BOTH the playing and the stage set-up of Minnesotan blues musician Charlie Parr, there’s an unfussiness which belies the richness and the complexity of his work. He gives the impression that, having just turned up with the check shirt on his back and the guitar case by his chair, he’ll be hitch-hiking his way out of town as soon as the show is over.

Charlie Parr's music is rich and complex

Charlie Parr & JD Wilkes, CCA, Glasgow ****

Playing as a guest of Glasgow roots and country promoter Fallen Angels Club, Parr brought with him an underground reputation (and a disproportionate popularity in Australia, where his music is a favourite of advertisers in particular). His show was clearly the choice of the enthusiast, of the amateur blues player as well as the listener, and his playing is the sort which even non-musicians might want to obsess over.

Yet there’s also a rich emotional connection to his work as a songwriter and as an interpreter of classics, and even for listeners who don’t have one eye on the fretwork, his music creates strong visual images. He brought a claustrophobic tension to Blind Willie McTell’s murder ballad Delia and a boisterous ragtime style to the traditional I Got Mine, a song popularised by Ry Cooder. That last track saw Parr accompanied on thrilling electric mouth organ by his touring buddy JD Wilkes, sometime vocalist with southern gothic group the Legendary Shack Shakers, whose smart brown suit and fedora couldn’t have been more of a visual contrast to Parr.

The latter artist, meanwhile, was modest enough to confirm that the audience actually wanted an encore before he played it; a defiant, a capella version of another traditional, Ain’t No Grave – previously adopted by Johnny Cash and Tom Jones – which positively vibrated the air in the room through the masterfully-controlled tremble in Parr’s voice.

DAVID POLLOCK