Trademark shades, white shirt and gray jeans, acoustic guitar and that gravel-filled growl he calls a voice, bluesy….It’s Graham Parker.
Thirty three years after his first album — the classic Howlin’ Wind — made its appearance, Parker is still going strong, if flying well below the radar.
Evidence of this was his solo performance last night in Titusville, at Concerts at the Crossing at the Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing. The 250-or-so-seat venue was just short of capacity, something I wasn’t expecting but should have (the number of people who asked “who?” when I told them I had interviewed him and was going to the show was far larger than the ones who remembered him).
But Parker played to the crowd with a delicious sense of humor — ascerbic, at times, but completely without malice. He moved between an acoustic guitar and an electric one, strumming mostly, but rocking through his set with elan, 20 songs ranging from his Howlin’ Wind (“Not If It Pleases Me”) to a number of songs from his funny self-release, Carp Fishing on Valium (songs written to accompany a book of short stories of the same name).
Highlights, of course, were the five cuts from Squeezing Out Sparks — it is 30 years since that amazing record hit the stores, a fact he acknowledged by dubbing the tour “From the Sublime to the Ridiculous” (Sparks to Carp).
And there were the jokes — self-deprecating — and stories (he introduced “Custom Fanny,” a brilliant send-up of the Rolling Stones, with a story about how Brian Porker — the protagonist of his stories — comes to audition to replace Mick Jagger, a story that featured a dead-on Keith Richard imitation).
So, while the great Graham Parker may not command the same audiences he did back in the late-’70s or 1981 (when I last saw him live), he remains a vital presence on stage and a songwriter deserving of more attention than he’s getting.
Wilco’s newest — and seventh — album, a self-titled disc, hits the stores June 30 and it promises to be a different experience than its previous six. This review in the Chicago Sun-Times, which says the disc offers a summation of a career, is a good one. (A stream of the disc will be available on a sporadic basis until the disc comes out on Wilcoworld.net.)
Hank Kalet 