the darker side of the
South.
“A lot of Southern
literature is dark and
creepy, and that’s what
fascinates me,” she said.
“I think folk music fits
me because you can
explore that darkness.”
Not that all of Parks’
music ranges into a
dark wilderness. “The
Home Place” is an
upbeat tune about the
place where her mom and aunts grew up in
Georgia, where their father told them before
he died that he’d hidden money somewhere
on the property, sparking off treasure hunts
around the remains of the building where
all that still stood was a chimney and the
foundations.
“We went looking for money, but what we
found was our family bond, that closeness we
shared,” said Parks.
The strength of her tie to the South can be
surprising; Parks moved around a lot as a kid,
thanks to her father’s job as an environmental
engineer, working as a civilian contractor with
the Army and skipping around from military
bases from Maryland to Germany.
Parks describes her mother as a bit of a gypsy,
always taking the family to interesting spots
no matter where they were stationed at the
time. Their travels influenced some of her
songs, like an older tune from her first album,
26
“Lorelei,” about a dangerous stretch of the
Rhine River in Germany, where a local legend
held that a siren spent her time on the rocks of
the river luring sailors to their watery doom.
Nailing down exactly what makes a folk song
“folk” can be tricky; indie bands play acoustic
songs without being folk musicians, and the
genre can be amorphous enough to include
bluegrass music because it’s an American
tradition and strict enough to say that real folk
is reserved for songs old enough that their
origins are untraceable.
For Parks, genre guidelines aren’t the key,
but sharing the genre. She looks at “Folk
Renaissance” as a way to share folk music
both modern and traditional with the masses,
providing an opportunity to show the
community that folk can stretch from old Irish
traditional tunes to new songs from Mumford
and Sons.
“I like the vastness,” said Parks. “I don’t want
August 2014
INSIGHT