Parker Millsap

Overview

An Oklahoma native brought up in the Pentecostal church, which he’s since departed, 20-year-old Parker Millsap will make you a true believer with his self-titled Okrahoma Records/ Thirty Tigers debut album. Accompanied by his collaborators, high school buddy Michael Rose on bass and fiddle-player Daniel Foulks, the young tunesmith delivers his religious-laced parables, character-driven narratives and relationship tales with the fire-and-brimstone fervor of a preacher, restoring our faith in the power of song.
Influenced by the dust-bowl neutrality of John Steinbeck, Millsap’s memorable creations include the wife-murdering bible-thumper of “Old Time Religion,” the self-made church-on-wheels minister in “Truck Stop Gospel,” the questioning believer of “When I Leave,” the meth cooks in “Quite Contrary” and the gambler who spends all his money buying lottery tickets in “Yosemite.” Filled equally with ghosts and guilt, as well as an objectivity that invites listeners to paint themselves in each picture, Millsap’s songs teeter on the fine line between gospel and the blues, sin and redemption, God and the devil, heaven and hell… from the pulpit to the back pew.
In songs like the blues-driven “Quite Contrary” (with a Millsap harp solo right out of the Yardbirds) and “At the Bar (Emerald City Blues),” Parker ponders what might become of well-known nursery rhyme figures and Wizard of Oz characters, imagining Mary, Mary as a street hooker with Little Jack Horner as her pimp or the Tin Man, “looking to find a piece of yourself/That’s been left behind.”
“That comes from studying the violent origin of fables and bible stories, and wondering what happened to the characters afterward, when they grew older,” explains Parker about “Quite Contrary,” describing it as his tribute to bluesman like Howlin’ Wolf or even Tom Waits. Millsap grew up listening to church hymns, while his dad, an electrician and music fan, turned him on to story-telling folk and blues artists like Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal, Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt.