If you’re visiting here for the first time as a music fan, and have been directed to this page, Welcome!

Feel free to poke around – I’ve been blogging in some form since the late 90s, but thanks to data loss and moves and whatnot, this particular corner of the internet contains stuff going back to 2002 or so – no need to go digging back that far, necessarily – over two decades, one starts to run out of things to say and repeat oneself.

This post stuck at the top, however, is the EPK/promo stuff that musicians have to do…

First, the bio:

A performer for more than 35 years, Chuck Parker has filled many musical roles: heavy metal guitarist, singer/songwriter, jazz sideman, open mic host, filk circle regular, session player, and World’s Okayest Bassist™.

Chuck has been a regular on the con circuit for more than a decade, and he’s played ballrooms, biergartens and backyards all over the country, both as a solo performer and as the bassist for wizard rock icons The Blibbering Humdingers. He plays slice of life, confessional geek tunes that are often kind of funny, and his lyrics have been called “sensitive”, “literate”, and “hard to sing…”

He is also a published poet, avid cyclist, spouse, father, and a herder of cats, both figuratively and literally.

That’s me. I’ve been doing this a while; as I say, I’m good enough after all this time.

If you’re looking for recordings of my tunes, check out Bandcamp, where my solo stuff is available for sale digitally. Quite a lot of it is also available on your favorite streaming service; for example, here I am on spotify, pandora, Apple Music, and YouTube.

You can also check out the Stuff I Made page, which includes links to almost everything, and then some, including writing, live recordings, appearances on other people’s records, and all sorts of stuff.

As indicated above, in addition to solo stuff, I play bass with the wizard rock/nerdmusik band The Blibbering Humdingers, whose presence on the internet you can find by clicking that link I just included.

If you’re curious about gigs, the best place is my gigs page, where I list the places I’m playing, either as myself or in an ensemble. It’s still kinda thin right now, as COVID still remains a thing, but if I’m playing someplace, it’ll be there.

I’m generally terrible about social media, though I will include links to gigs and stuff there – I’m old, and I don’t keep up like I should, but my accounts are over there to the right under “social media.”

That’s the story, really – keep scrolling if you’re interested in my muggle life as a dad, cyclist, pet owner, and professional bureaucrat who occasionally has opinions!

This space has been pretty quiet for the last little while; not much but playlists most weeks and complaining about work stuff. That’s honestly been the standard agenda with life lately, and I’m tired of repeating myself. Also, it’s just been busy; long hours, getting yanked into unpleasant temporary supervisory stuff, and I’d rather sit down with a book and a beer than look at a computer screen any longer.

There’s been some other stuff going on, and I’ll likely talk about that other stuff eventually, but not necessarily right now – still getting used to a few things and would rather have some accomplishments to talk about than basic incremental progress like in my Monday morning staff meeting…

It’d be that and complaining about pollen. Damn, my eyes itch.

Anyway, here are some tunes I’ve been listening to this morning; kind of some cool alt-grrl business with a pleasant pop flavor, and some local stuff…

1. “Girls Talk” – Tegan and Sara
2. “Cornfields and Roadkill” – Humbird
3. “DON’T GET FRESH WITH ME” – Low Cut Connie
4. “Hello Stranger (*feat. SG Goodman)” – Kelsey Waldon
5. “Sinner” – The Last Dinner Party
6. “Burial Ground” – The Decemberists, James Mercer
7. “Possibly Alaska” – Maddison Krebs
8. “Honey” – Farmer, Dave Matthews
9. “Good Old Days” – The Revivalists, The Head and the Heart
10. “Cowboy Gangster Politician” – Goldie Boutilier
11. “Funhouse” – Suburban Key Party
12. “Make Some Time” – Deau Eyes
13. “Mysterious (This Time It’s Serious)” – Talisman

So, that’s the second time I had to call for a rescue due to biking mishaps this season so far. This one was a popped tire that sounded like a gun going off, on the same stretch of the Virginia Capital Trail where hit the pine cone last August and dripped blood for four miles back to the car.

This time it was nine miles.

Thankfully I only ended up walking the bike back a mile or so thanks to a helpful rider along the way who spotted me a tube (the hole was way too big to patch), though the tire kind of split as well, so I limped it back to my pick-up spot (I truly don’t deserve my lovely spouse and her willingness to come find me), but once I got back home, I ordered new tires and tubes which should be here early next week…so I’ll be riding the mountain bike a few days, at least.

I’m beginning to suspect that this particular stretch of road has it in for me…

3/31 Edited to Add: So to exact my revenge against the trail today, I rode fifty miles, in less than four hours, on a mountain bike. I did not ride the offending section this time (I started from the east side), though I did flip it off while I passed it on the way to the trailhead.

Assuming all goes well and the Freedom Caucus and Senator Rand Paul don’t decide to shake things up, the CR that expires at midnight tonight will be succeeded by a full half-year official budget for my half of the Federal Government, and we won’t shut down (again). Here’s to hoping, anyway. This’ll get done, but I kind of expect to be theoretically furloughed for a few hours on Saturday thanks to someone grandstanding in an election year, but soon overcome by the impressive will of a bunch of legislators who’ve already had to reschedule their flights home once or twice ahead of a two-week recess.

It’ll be sorted by Monday morning, but I expect the weekend buffer will encourage some shenanigans, if only to distract from the pending seizing of assets in New York.

Apart from that, this week’s been a hell of a month. I’m settling in to my temporary boss powers, mostly, and getting stuff done, both with regard to work and a bunch of stuff around the house, but I’ve been in kind of a down cycle. About half-way through the week, I identified the reason why I was feeling so down when I looked at the date for Saturday. Happy Birthday, Dad. Always hits me right around this time; I just have to deal with it.

We will have a bit of a distraction on Sunday, anyway, as we’re taking a second swing at the house concert/event/thing, this time bringing out the big guns, having our good friend Mikey Mason play the Parker Library and Music Venue™ (we’re trying out names…), on, as fate would have it, a somewhat significant date. It should be a lot of fun, hanging with friends and enjoying some music (including me playing a few tunes to open up!) in our overall pretty decent home/performance space. Well, we’ll continue to work out the kinks, anyway.

That’s really what’s the what ’round this place. Keeping ourselves busy and mostly out of trouble.

As for the traditional Friday tunes, it’s still pretty country/americana, but the weird kind, which is fine with me:

1. “Summer Sun” – Plains w/ Jess Williamson
2. “Raleigh and Spencer” – Laurel Hells Ramblers, Joshua Quimby
3. “Same Old Country Love Song” – Brian Falduto
4. “Highwoman” – The Highwomen
5. “Once Upon a Time at Texaco pt. 1” – Amigo the Devil
6. “Calliope” – Abby Webster
7. “Real Low Down Lonesome” – Early James, Sierra Ferrell
8. “Cardinal” – Kacey Musgraves
9. “Critterland” – Willi Carlisle
10. “Beat Your Ass To Death” – Dan Spencer
11. “Out of Vogue” – Fever Dolls
12. “Loaded Guns” – King Lazy Eye
13. “I Just Wanna Be a Pickle” – Natalie Burdick
14. “Friends” – BETWEEN FRIENDS

My first (of six) weeks playing the boss for the team at work is wrapping up. It’s actually been a bit less stressful than I expected. I’ve not been *not* stressed (especially in the early part of the week), but it’s not been a complete disaster. I also managed to move some of my own projects along, which was kind of novel. We’ll see how the rest goes.

The rest of the week passed largely without incident. The weather’s been gorgeous, sunny and in the high 70° – 80° range. I took great advantage of it by logging sixty miles or so on the Capital Trail over the last few days, and seem to be getting my bike legs back pretty quickly. It felt good, and it’s nice to be reminded that I’m in pretty good shape (below the neck, anyway) for being a fifty year-old IT guy. Also, the flowers the “trail abassadors” plant along its length are starting to bloom, so that’s cool. Otherwise this week, it’s been more of the usual, though yesterday I did, however briefly, pay my credit card balance down to zero, at least until the next Chewy order full of cat food hits, so that felt good.

This weekend is filling up pretty quickly as well, oddly enough. Although no one in the house is Irish dancing these days, there’s talk of hitting the Church Hill Irish Festival at some point, because it’s usually a good time, and again, the weather looks pretty great. Also, Thursday afternoon I got a note from WNRN that I won a couple of tickets to the Wanda Sykes show in town on Saturday, so I guess we’re doing that as well, which also should be a good time, ahead of some bigger plans next weekend.

Otherwise, here are some Friday tunes, and the algorithm seems to have finally started shaking the “all americana, all the time” habit, and has a little more variety to it:

1. “Thieves” – Sammy Rae & The Friends
2. “Boombox” – Charlie Parr
3. “State I’m In” – Sarah Gross
4. “Vetiver” – Hurray For The Riff Raff
5. “Bubble of my Gum” – DURRY
6. “Willow” – Sister Sadie
7. “Kreacher” – The Bridge City Sinners
8. “I’M IN THE MARKET TO PLEASE NO ONE” – Winona Fighter
9. “Panic Attack” – Judas Priest
10. “Soul Shaker” – Sarah Lake
11. “Wish Me WEll” – Red Shahan
12. “Storm To Weather” – Grace Petrie
13. “Bernadette” – Jason Scott

Spent way too much time on the phone this week; meetings and calls and consultations, and all kinds of things to get me up to speed to be the boss for the next couple of weeks. Not a whole lot of life outside of that, really. Not much to report. Didn’t get all that much time outside, either, thanks to after-work dentist appointments and being stuck in traffic and rain and all kinds of other stuff in the way. I did get to vote, so that was cool. But honestly, most of it was kind of just there…with a dial-tone or the MS Teams equivalent.

Bleh. Gonna go out for drinks with some friends tomorrow afternoon; hopefully it’ll be a nice time.

Anyway; tunes. Lots of ’em.

1. “Defying Gravity” – From Wicked OBCR
2. “Bubble Pop Electric” – Gwen Stefani
3. “brutal” – Olivia Rodrigo
4. “Plaster Caster” – KISS
5. “Five Card Stud” – Ace Frehley
6. “Possum Kingdom” – Toadies
7. “Body Brain” – Merciful Zero
8. “Losing Teeth” – The Scarring Party
9. “Life Lessons” – Railgun
10. “Star-Spangled Man” – ‘Rogers: The Musical’
11. “Can’t Hardly Wait” – The Replacements
12. “The Boy With The Arab Strap” – Belle and Sebastian
13. “Halah” – Mazzy Star

I’ve been ridiculously productive this week; I finished fawm with a day to spare, even if I didn’t end up actually recording anything during February. I wrote fourteen songs, and a handful of them have potential, which is the idea. I’m aiming to have a new record ready to sell at Congregate this year, so I have until July to get ten songs in solid, fully-produced shape, which is totally doable.

I also cranked it at work, getting my MS Project skills back after fifteen years of letting them lapse, and have scheduled the heck out of all of the agency’s IT requirements so we can keep the program managers in line. Good thing, too, because it’s looking like starting in a week, I’m going to be the de-facto boss for six weeks while the regular boss is off on a little sabbatical. Joy. At least congress kicked the can a few weeks so we won’t be shutting down the end of next week; instead, if it happens, it’ll be right in the middle of my reign over the program support division.

I also handled some important stuff on the domestic front, paying bills and arranging plans for later this month, and all kinds of other things.

The big news is I did this with a killer sinus headache the whole freaking week, which was a serious challenge. Doing anything with those gnomes mining for mucus with their hammering and digging and pounding behind my eyes and forehead is.

But I did it, dammit. Here’s some songs:

1. “Middle of the Morning” – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
2. “Hey Jealousy” – Gin Blossoms
3. “Pilgrim” – The Wood Brothers
4. “Where Are You Going” – Dave Matthews Band
5. “Acid Country” – Tim Wilson
6. “Pink Triangle” – Weezer
7. “Sweet Oblivion” – Valentine Wolfe
8. “Body Brain” – Merciful Zero
9. “Wildest Dreams (Taylor’s Version) – Taylor Swift
10. “Death Knell” – Ghost
11. “Nights in White Satin” – Oceans of Slumber
12. “Angeline Is Coming Home” – The Badlees
13. “Name” – The Goo Goo Dolls
14. “The Boy With the Arab Strap” – Belle and Sebastian

Another week where I’m filling in for the boss, and spending too much time on conference calls. This is starting to become a habit, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I suppose it’s inevitable, as so many folks look to me as the substitute boss most of the time anyway, but it’s not like I *asked* for this arrangement; it just sort of happened organically, or was engineered from the shadows…or…hrm.

In any case, it meant I had to run a few meetings and answer a few more questions than usual, and respond to a couple of requests from on high when some missed marks in areas adjacent trickled up. Not too terrible, all told, but just adds to the other garbage I’m already dealing with.

On the fawm front, I’m up to ten of fourteen, with six days to go, and one song percolating in the background. I’ll hit the mark, but I won’t be running up the scoreboard. Couple of good ones in the hopper, though, and that’s really what it’s all about.

And finally, with the weather flirting with the sixties yesterday, I had my first real road bike ride of the year on the VCT, knocking out a little over twenty miles at a pretty reasonable speed. It felt good, and there shouldn’t be too many concerns about being ready for the half-century and change of the Cap2Cap in May.

In terms of tunes, it started off country, then sliding into an indie pop rock vibe with strong feminine tendencies…Not bad:

1. “Hi-Country” – Daniel Donato
2. “Hw It Ends” – Mama’s Broke
3. “Pump It Up” – Elvis Costello & The Atrractions
4. “Glad All Over” – The Rezillos
5. “Halah” – Mazzy Star
6. “Can’t Hardly Wait” – The Replacements
7. “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” – Pat Benetar
8. “Lose You (feat. Soccer Mommy)” – Bully
9. “Pool Hopping” – Illuminati Hotties
10. “Lilacs” – Waxahatchee
11. “Puppy and a Truck” – Jenny Lewis
12. “Knees Deep” – The Beths
13. “brutal” – Olivia Rodrigo
14. “Brand New Key” – The Dollyrots

So many slides. Over and over. Hours and hours. That’s the story of my week. Couple of big briefings for folks in the rarified air of senior management, plus a handful of training sessions on how to use simple SharePoint libraries delivered to uncooperative audiences, along with all the preparation and editing and run-throughs and re-ordering and, and, and….

My subconscious is presenting things in slide format. My dreams are coming with bullet points. I can’t frame my thinking in any other way. I ended up hiking an extra two miles at the State Park down the road after work on Wednesday because I got a bit lost and misdirected because trail markers are on posts rather than Teams windows…okay, it might have had more to do with my Avenza map temporarily losing contact with the GPS network, but I still missed my turn and went out of my way.

Whatever. I need this long weekend coming up. I’ve got some recording to do, some errands to run, and, frankly, some resting to do.

But tonight, I’m going to go out with my spouse and eldest child to celebrate a friend’s birthday by having a drink or two and doing some potentially embarrassing karaoke.

Anyway…tunes. Still a bunch of indie americana and alt-country, but it’s getting a bit broader, as the whole Super Bowl business has had me listening to Taylor Swift; gotta do my part to support the Deep State™ after all:

1. “My Dog and Me” – John Hiatt & The Goners
2. “Been Worryin'” – Cat Clyde & Jeremie Albino
3. “That’s All I Know About Arkansas” – John Leventhal w Rosanne Cash
4. “Simply Belong to You” – Shinyribs
5. “Everything I Like” – The Suitcase Junket
6. “Roll With It” – The Record Company
7. “Macon If We Make It” – Lucero
8. “I Gotta Get Drunk” – Redbird
9. “Baby, I’m Still Right Here (With You)”- – THGe Pink Stones w Nikki Lane
10. “A White Shade of Pale” – Houndmouth
11. “Pilgrim” – The Wood Brothers
12. “While I’m Down” – John Cragie, TK @ The Holy Know-Nothings
13. “Old Man” – The Wailin’ Jennys

A week. It happened.

The biggest news was the work thing where a couple policy changes and some questionable judgement (at least in the sense of making a decision without all the necessary information) has left a few of the projects I’m working in doubt in terms of funding. To be entirely fair, the underlying reason for this is the fact that we’re now almost half way through the current fiscal year and we still don’t have a federal budget, and the latest continuing resolution funding runs out in four weeks, and Congress continues in dysfunction. If things worked a bit better a few hours up I-95, management wouldn’t have to make these decisions at all. In any case, I’m likely to be spending a bit of time today talking my boss’s boss down from the ledge, as it’s too soon to write things off (because there are a few weeks of slack before the drop dead date), unless we do the shutdown thing this time, in which case we’re all screwed.

This is, in broad strokes, the story of every requirement I’ve worked this year.

Oh well. I shall manage, and probably pull this out of the trash heap in the end, but all these factors out of my control are getting rather tiresome.

But hey, I’ve got most of four songs written for fawm, and a couple of them maybe feel like keepers. We’ll see. Many of my friends are being exceedingly productive (embarrassingly so), and it’s honestly pretty great to see. I’ll catch up in the end, though I’m pretty sure I need some more varied input to help generate some output. It’s going to be all rainy and stuff this weekend, so I see some quality couch time with the tv or a good book in my immediate future; hopefully that’ll spark something.

As for other people’s tunes, it’s still a lot of americana/alt-country in the algorithm, though that hour or three I left the “new rock” playlist accidentally running has dropped a couple of heavier hitters in there. Sure:

1. “All The Gold In California” – Brother Marshall and the Choir of Fire
2. “Angel From Montgomery” – Buddy Miller, Brandi Carlisle, The Lone Bellow
3. “Lost In The Wilderness” – Feeder
4. “Johnny Dear” – Kassi Valazza
5. “Willow” – Sister Sadie
6. “I Forgot To Be Your Lover” – The Black Keys
7. “Yours to Bear” – honeyhoney
8. “It Must Be Someone Else’s Fault” – Courtney Marie Andrews
9. “They Wait” – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
10. “Got Your Six” – Mary Gauthier
11. “The Way” – Mike and the Moonpies
12. “Stuck on You” – Dea Matrona
13. “El Camino” – Elizabeth Cook

The past weekend and several days on either side of it have been kind of a roller coaster…

First of all, the big birthday party for my lovely spouse went off amazingly well, both in terms of remembering how to host events, as well as “beta testing” the new house space as a music venue. Our friends The Salacious Crumbles played a couple of excellent sets on Saturday for a crowd of friends and chosen family, and I played a few tunes as well (and had both the eldest child and Madison and Leigh of the Crumbles sing along – as you see in the photo above). It was a lot of fun for everyone, the food from Curry in a Hurry and Minglewood Bake Shop went over swimmingly, and it turns out this house is absolutely excellent for entertaining.

We’re going to do it again before you know it; stay tuned.

As for the low, Lukin, one of our elder cats, who’s been having some health issues for the past year or so, passed quietly in his sleep on his favorite chair overnight on Sunday. He was a great addition to the family, full of personality in spite of his deafness and health issues. We kind of knew it was coming, as he slowed down tremendously over the last week or two, and mostly stopped eating, but never lost the friendly and outgoing attitude, making sure to walk (slowly) into the library on Saturday evening to accept proper tribute and devotion from all the folks visiting his house. We’re gonna miss him.

Y’all can see how it’s been. I’m hoping for some sort of settled-down quiet and normal this week, though work’s been kind of twitchy about providing that. We’ll see how the rest of the week goes. I’ve also been trying to make February Album Writing Month happen, though it’s been tough so far; I’ve got three sets up lyrics written, as this post goes live, which is on pace to finish on schedule, but I’ll be honest, it’s been a struggle. maybe I’ll write a song about that? who knows. But, again, we’ll see how it goes.

Hang in there, folks.