Singer-songwriter Charlie Parr today unveiled his new single “817 Oakland Avenue.” The track appears on Parr’s forthcoming Last Of The Better Days Ahead album, which arrives via Smithsonian Folkways on July 30.
“I’m so grateful for the fortune of friendship and for my parents, who always told me to value those relationships above all else,” Parr said of his latest single. “This is a song about gratitude, inspired by and dedicated to my friends.”
Charlie Parr previously previewed the 11-track LP with its title track and single “Everyday Opus.” The Duluth, Minnesota-based musician wrote all of the material featured on Last Of The Better Days Ahead.
Parr shared the following regarding Last Of The Better Days Ahead:
“’Last of the Better Days Ahead’ is a way for me to refer to the times I’m living in. I’m getting on in years, experiencing a shift in perspective that was once described by my mom as ‘a time when we turn from gazing into the future to gazing back at the past, as if we’re adrift in the current, slowly turning around.’ Some songs came from meditations on the fact that the portion of our brain devoted to memory is also the portion responsible for imagination, and what that entails for the collected experiences that we refer to as our lives. Other songs are cultivated primarily from the imagination, but also contain memories of what may be a real landscape, or at least one inspired by vivid dreaming. The album represents one full rotation of the boat in which we are adrift—looking ahead for a last look at the better days to come, then being turned around to see the leading edge of the past as it fades into the foggy dreamscape of our real and imagined histories.”
Stream Charlie Parr’s “817 Oakland Avenue” below:
