Charlie Parr talks music, mental health in new video – Duluth News Tribune

DULUTH — Area singer-songwriter Charlie Parr is the guest on the very first episode of “Dissonance Sessions,” a video collection described as “portion therapy session, component recording session.”

The sequence is manufactured by Dissonance, a nonprofit corporation that grew out of a system released at St. Paul’s given that-shuttered McNally Smith School of Music in 2012. With “a mission of contributing to a healthier setting in the arts community,” according to

its web site,

Dissonance facilitates conversations about psychological well being and wellness.

In the new video clip, posted Monday, Parr performs some of his recent primary tunes and speaks at size with host Sarah Souder Johnson, who is a psychological health therapist. Parr has been open up about his longtime struggle with despair, which he discusses additional in the Dissonance video clip.

“I you should not know what it seems to be like from outside,” he suggests about going through episodes of despair. “From within, you can’t chat to any person. You just can’t … that energy’s not there. You can find this unusual variety of curtain of fog or haze all about you, all the time.”

Though Parr describes songs as a regular in his daily life, he doesn’t supply any facile assurances about art’s electrical power to heal wounds or resolve own challenges. Reflecting on the “darkness” of the songs on his 2021 album, “Last of the Greater Days Ahead,” Parr observes: “Most of my favorite new music is darker, type of somber music.”

Parr also describes the ongoing method of mourning his father, who died in 1995, and the problems of becoming a guardian himself. “Remaining a mum or dad is difficult,” he states. “You do not get a different chance to deal with it. You go by way of it, struggle with it, and probably fall short at it more than not.”

That observation, Parr claims, led to his pained, ambivalent music, “Bed of Wasps,” which he performs in a session captured final January at St. Paul’s Chubby Mammal recording studio. The Dissonance online video moreover consists of footage from Parr’s January residency at the Turf Club, also in St. Paul.

“As a result of these discussions,” said Souder in a information launch saying the online video sequence, “we want to clearly show that it’s Okay to chat about having difficulties with mental wellbeing or dependancy, and that it’s also Okay — and pretty possible — to go after wellness and recovery.”

“Dissonance Periods” have been conceived by Jason Chaffee, a Minneapolis musician and filmmaker, who directs each episode. Forthcoming episodes will function artists like Parr’s fellow Minnesotans Chastity Brown and Katy Vernon, according to the news release.

For much more information on Dissonance and the new online video collection, which is absolutely free to check out by means of YouTube, see

dissonance.org.

Parr is on a European live performance tour that will carry on by Might 29. For far more data on the artist, see

charlieparr.com.