Photo by Matt White-Lunar

Finding Eden

By Matt White-Lunar
Contributing Writer

When I first started talking to Eden Parker I was struck by how dedicated he was to the simple act of communicating. Our first chats had little to do with music, and I found myself quite impressed by his ability to openly relate to concepts and perspectives that most people twice his age can just barely grasp. Of course, a lot of that comes with the mileage he’s put into what he does, and the work he has done in realizing who he is.

Raised in very rural Montana, Parker explains his work as almost an inevitable byproduct of his upbringing.

“Video games were banned in our household and so we were forced to create things,” he said. “I spent a lot of time playing alone.”

Those are experiences that are almost common in the lives of musicians. Music becomes a necessity where for others it is merely an option.

He also humbly acknowledges that small town life does leave something to be desired in terms of what culture one is able to be exposed to.

His rural western roots also shaped his decision to wait until he was in his twenties to come out of the closet. Not that it stopped him from finding people like Dolly Parton and Jewel to help him shape his understanding of the musical world, or from being comfortable with aspects of his nature that now shape some of the essence of his song-writing.

In describing his upbringing further, he explains that he comes from a family where music was a common hobby.

“My mother played piano for church,” he said, “and my sister took guitar lessons and played piano much more seriously then I did.”

Unlike a lot of indie acts, Parker, who grew up in in a small town in Montana, is surprisingly at home in the indie-pop world. He’s also someone who unlike a lot of our fellow musical “peers,” views his path as much more than a phase of life or youthful pursuit. He quite literally puts his money where his art is, financing both a full-length album and tour as well as a music video.

Dedication to one’s passion, especially in a world where passionate people are a rarer breed, is not just impressive, it’s required if that person wants to carve out a place for himself, regardless of the chosen field.

During the first few minutes of our evening together, he proudly displayed a tattoo he has just below his right shoulder blade.

“It’s the date I wrote my first song, when I was eleven,” he remarked with the myth-making presence of mind which all musicians and artists hold somewhere inside themselves.
However as Mr. Parker is well aware, it takes more than a dream that holds you to create a life in art. It takes a chest full of bravery as well.

The fact that he started off on his first tour with only a dollar and seventy-five cents in his bank account, and was still able to pull off just under twenty tour dates with no financial backing and no label support, should make the kids in the do it yourself ethic punk scene nod in solidarity.

Parker once auditioned for American Idol, which he describes as an eye-opening brush with the coldness of the music industry. He was rejected for the show with the producers’ explanation that they already had what they needed. Those kinds of experiences are not uncommon for people who try to break into the pop music world.

Fortunately for Mr. Parker that rejection didn’t crush him, instead he did what most people don’t; he actually learned from it and he was still passionate and shrewd, wanting his music to be heard.

“I write a lot of songs in my car,” he says.

He once had a friend text lyrics he spoke to her back to his phone so he could write them down.
Mr. Parker spent some time working as a florist and caring for an ailing family member, and there was a period where he, like a lot of musicians, settled into a normal life complete with a homebody routine, but his music never stopped pulling his head and his heart back into the the clouds of his dreams in a sky he knew he was destined to chase.

During the interview for this article, I handed Mr. Parker one of my guitars and he played me some songs he’d written about a man he loved whom he saw succumb to drug addiction. At one point I picked up my 12 string and accompanied him. That’s the type of musician he is.

The sheer passion and his lyrical hooks were something I’ve seen few times before. You can see similar passion in a young Bono Vox. The inborn inflections in his voice when he sings are clearly passed down from his African-American father and Irish-American mother. His lyrical cues speak to Mr. Parker’s lifetime of listening to pop singer-songwriters and learning from them.
It must be said that both of us being fiercely independent solo musicians (and there will be a few out there who can understand this), we rarely actively play music with other people and almost never accompany other musicians. His raw passion impressed me so much that I just couldn’t help myself. It was nice to share a moment in music together. That’s also the way that musicians, being a strange bunch, pay compliment to each other.

It’s clear to me when we discuss performance style that he’s well aware of how to approach the common audience and give them what they want. That shrewd understanding can only come from heavy tour mileage and many nights in front of roomfuls of strangers.

When we discussed covers, he admitted with a smile through clenched teeth that he covers Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” so he can pull an audience closer to him during a show.

“Sometimes it’s good to give people something they understand,” Parker said. “Something they can relate to.”

Parker said he has never received a negative response after a show. Of course, that’s not surprising given his piano-driven pop-drenched style, and lyrics that any fan of the Beatles or Bob Dylan would be able to get into. The casual listener may well compare him to Billy Joel or Freddie Mercury, given his dramatic and theatrical delivery, but such a simple comparison would be selling him short.

When Parker talks of Fargo, he describes ending up here as “a happy accident.” Although it’s unclear to me who benefits more from the accident,” Parker or the local community, which he knows can be somewhat starved for substantive, passionate entertainment.

He finds similar fortune in his backing band, who he says have really come to understand his musical vision and style and are behind his project one hundred percent.

His band will be backing him this Saturday at 9:30 p.m. at JT Cigarro where his self-financed music video will debut.

I asked him where the notion for the video came from, and he explained to me that the imagery is from a dream that he had, which incidentally is where some of his lyrics are first formed as well.
When I think of our evening together I am struck by three things. Eden Parker is a budding performer with real talent and real white knuckle devotion to his work. He is surprisingly free from the bitterness that tends to hound a lot of us who play, write, record and preform for people and he has begun creating a persona, a story and a life that begs to be discovered.

All musicians have a desire to communicate something to everyone, to the world at large even if that world, for them is just some girl or boy. Some musicians focus solely on spectacle for monetary gain and others are compelled to open their emotional veins onstage to anyone who will hear. Mr. Parker’s voice is one in a growing secret national chorus which is, for those who hear it, a welcomed change. A needed alternative to the bland monotony of FM airwaves and stale bar bands.

Fortunately for us he’s around and he’s letting us witness an artists’ continuing journey into discovering who his is and where he fits in with us. We as a community are lucky; we have the option to go on some of that journey with him where we can watch and listen and can continue finding Eden together.

Eden Parker’s debut album is available at Zandbroz and Orange Records. He’s also on Facebook and Twitter. Buy his records and go to his shows. I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

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If You Go

What: “Leaving Eden” Music Video Premiere Party
Where: JT Cigarro, 4554 7th Ave SW
When: Sat Jan 15, 9:30pm
Info: 701.277.0711