The Boston Herald

PETER PARCEK WILL SHOWCASE 'EVOLUTION' AS GUITAR PLAYER
by Daniel Gewertz

Guitarist Peter Parcek is about to release his debut album at age 49. The rich stew of rootsy styles that spices his blues took nearly a life-time to cook.

"Country, blues, surf music, folk, rockabilly...I heard it all on my radio in Connecticut when I was a boy. I had this huge antenna that I threw out my window. That antenna was, like, my lifeline," said Parcek. "I used to hear the WWVA Country & Western Jamboree all the way from a Wheeling, W.Va., station."

Parcek's CD, "Evolution," will be released at a Regattabar gig on Thursday. Though Parcek has been playing guitar for 30 years, he's only pursued music full time in the '90s. For many years his "day job" was social worker and counselor.

The CD is a mature and melodic take on blues-based material, with occasional forays into jumping guitar athletics. Al Kooper, Ronnie Earl and Jen Trynin guest, and Tom West plays keyboards.

"It's called 'Evolution' because at one time I was so into being a guitar virtuoso, I was expressing nothing beyond the instrument itself. So this record is part of my evolution away from perfection and toward expression," he said.

Parcek calls himself "a guitar romantic." As a child, his mother used Green Stamps, the supermarket coupons that were icons of the '50s and '60s, to purchase a guitar for her son. "It was a nylon-stringed classical guitar. I couldn't play it, but I hugged it in bed," he said.

Parcek is completely self-taught, but he spent many hours in small clubs mere feet from blues greats such as Buddy Guy, Freddie King, Albert Collins and Matt Murphy. "I studied where their hands went," the Brookline resident said.

A year living in London in the late '60s transformed his relationship with guitar. "I saw Jeff Beck and Hendrix play. And I met Peter Green when he was at his amazing peak," Parcek said about the legendary original guitarist of Fleetwood Mac.

Back in his family's Connecticut home, Parcek spent a year alone, practicing. "I virtually locked myself in my room with my guitar," he said. "I scared my mother."

By 1971, he was venturing outside of his room, even opening once for the Grateful Dead in 1971. "They were nice enough to warn me not to drink anything backstage," he said with a laugh.

While Parcek received some exposure with his band Nine Below Zero, he's only recently come into his own. In the '90s he has toured and recorded with Pinetop Perkins, and opened for Koko Taylor, Son Seals and Sheryl Crow.

His style is far removed from the flash and burn pyrotechnics of the teen blues phenoms. There's a sultry, ruminative knowledge to his ballads. And his lifetime of eclectic tastes have resulted in such assured hybrid oddities as "Lightning Hopkins Goes Surfing," a romp that could just as well have been called "Dick Dale Down in the Delta."

Parcek knows playing blues isn't about self-inflicted suffering. "You don't get the blues, you express them and exorcise them. Maybe by doing that, you help others out of their own blues. In fact, playing blues has a connection to social work in a weird way," he said with a slow smile.