Nashville – The small upstairs venue of Cannery Row was packed wall to wall with weary yet enthusiastic attendees of Nashville’s Americana Music Festival by the time Parker Millsap took the stage for his 45-minute set at 10pm. Folks crowded the lobby downstairs to hear the young singer-songwriter, as the room itself was at capacity. The 20-year old Millsap, flanked by bassist Michael Rose and fiddler Daniel Foulks, armed with an acoustic guitar and a harmonica and dressed in black and white stripes like a prisoner from the past, carried himself with the swagger and confidence of a bluesman three times his age. And when he opened his mouth to sing, it became rather clear that the young man from Oklahoma could hang with the best and most seasoned pros on the Nashville Americana scene.
After an instrumental introduction with heavy, percussive guitar work and hip shaking that would make Elvis himself tip his cap out of respect, Millsap and company launched into “Quite Contrary.” The song takes a hard look at the economy in parts of Oklahoma, where young, underemployed college graduates resort to selling moonshine and methamphetamines because there are no decent jobs to be found. Next, the band shifted gears and the spirit picked up for the next two songs with “Mansion Over The Hilltop” and “Palisades,” a number from Parker’s independently made first album. Millsap, showing versatility in both style and content then broke out a newer song titled “Heaven Sent.” This powerful ballad tells the story of a young gay man writing to his Baptist preacher father asking to accept him for who he is. On the chorus Millsap takes his voice to a new level of electrifying rawness. Keeping with his theme of questionable religious values and the affects they have on others, the band carried on with the murder ballad “Old-Time Religion” and closed with crowd favorite “Truck Stop Gospel.”
Parker’s songwriting is both emotional as well as revealing. Hailing from a part of America where the Bible Belt crashes into the Rust Belt and the once family-owned farms are being bought up for pennies on the dollar, Millsap uses music to tell the story of those folks who are down on their luck but still high on their Savior.
Millsap never held back once throughout his energetic romp on the stage; breaking strings, sweating profusely and blowing a hurricane’s worth of wind through his harmonica. He pushed his vocal cords to the limit with growls and howls that sound like they can not come from his throat but rather the ghost of a Delta bluesman that lives somewhere in his belly. His playing style is neither crisp nor technical, but instead helps to percussively drive his songs forward (he is pretty decent with a glass slide though). Every shimmy, shake and harmonica solo was met with hoots and hollers from the crowd, and each song was received with thunderous applause from the shoulder-to-shoulder audience. Though not yet old enough to order a drink at the bar, the square-jawed Parker Millsap crafts songs on the level of most of his Americana superiors that paved the wave for the current crop of young talent.
With only one major label album under his belt, it won’t be long before I can tell the story of seeing Parker Millsap back when he was a playing small upstairs club in Nashville. Go see him for yourself: his U.S. tour continues through October 13 and then resumes again overseas for the rest of the month.
Kevin Ott
Latest posts by Kevin Ott (see all)
- Jessica Hernandez & The Deltas Get The Basement Crowd Thumping - October 31, 2014
- A Whirlwind Named Savannah Lynne - October 28, 2014
- The Easy Leaves: Traditional Meets Modern Country In Music City - October 27, 2014
