Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant has, if
nothing else, a very distinct sound. It’s a sound that few – if any – try to
emulate, and those who do generally fall far short of their mark. Parker
Millsap, however, in opening with “You Gotta Move,” had that tight,
strained-yet-smooth sound that Zeppelin fans go wild for. His is the voice that
hurls itself over the audience like it hurts the singer, going for that rough,
raw, hard-hitting kind of sensibility that perfectly embodies the group.
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| Parker Millsap |
Millsap’s crew is a rag-tag bunch.
Two are clean-shaven, two have beards that stretch well below their chin.
Sometimes they seem like a truck-stop crew, other times they look like they
might have just come in on their horse-and-buggy from somewhere near Lancaster County.
Regardless of their onstage image, Parker Millsap knows how to groove.
The crowd favorite is easily “Quite
Contrary,” which documents nursery-rhyme characters’ fall from grace as they
decide to pool their money and start cooking crystal meth. The lyrics are
seamless and airtight; the upright bass player’s eyes remain closed like he’s
feeling the music straight to his bones.
Then there’s the fiddle player,
whose red beard reaches mid-chest and red hair streams down his back. He is
professional, knows when a guitar is out of tune, and has a “just happy to be
hear” grin on his face that makes him fun to watch.
Parker’s guitar has scratch marks
above the strings where his pick comes in contact with the wood of the
instrument. It looks like the marks on the door of a horror movie, where an
irrelevant character is killed just as she encounters a dead-end doorway that
refuses to open. The same could be said for Parker’s music; it’s got the wild,
fierce quality of a cornered animal that screams and lashes out and cries for
help but Millsap’s music refuses to die at the end of the scene. The set builds
and builds into a crescendo of guitar and fiddle and shouted lyrics that make
you wonder where all that anger came from.
For all their gusto, all their
sloppy kind of charm, Parker Millsap still has a way to go if they want to
“make it.” Parker makes it a habit of spending full minutes tuning his guitar
between songs, losing audience interest and even prompting his own band to
advise him to “tune while [he] talk[s]” in order to “[keep] this shit professional.”
Similarly, there are certain
boundaries of etiquette that the majority of the band either didn’t get the
memo for, or chose to ignore. When you’re asked to be the opener for a band
that is trying to make it big – or is even in the process of making it big – it’s
important to treat any time on stage like the privilege that it is. The
audience is not there for you, and as such will be less forgiving for mistakes
made onstage.
When Houndmouth brought Parker
Millsap out for their final song of the encore – an energized and freewheeling rendition
of Dion’s “Runaround Sue” – at least half of Millsap’s band was obviously out
of their mind on something. Putting illicit chemicals in your body in the name
of having fun and enhancing the show is one thing; being too messed up to sing,
find the mic, or even stay awake in front of a crowd while the headliner is
trying to close their show is not only unprofessional – it’s distracting and
takes away from the entire performance.
Parker Millsap’s got some great
potential. Their album is replete with a number of solid tracks. They’re worth
checking out, but if you go to see them, keep in mind that they are a young
band, a band whose performance and fame have not yet awarded them with the
privilege of treating their show – or their headliner’s show – as their own
personal party. Once they figure that out, they’ll be well worth the ticket.
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