Reid Parsons is a Vermont native, having grown up in little Moretown, about an hour from the capital city of Burlington, where she currently resides. “I am so lucky to live here and to have been raised here,” she avowed. “The lush explosion of nature in the summer, the harsh winters, the space to breathe, and the slow pace are all part of my creative flow.”
Indeed, all facets of her creativity are embraced on “Back to Back,” which she produced, arranged, and wrote all the songs save for a sensual reading of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘I’m On Fire.’ Parsons’ eclectic and earthy sensibility invites comparisons to Anaïs Mitchell, Frazey Ford, Bonnie Raitt, and Susan Tedeschi. “I strive to write from a place of simplicity,” she said. “I want to leave space for interpretation, to build a room for others to process, to emote, to have their own experiences in.”
Parsons has been playing music out in the world since the age of 13 and hasn’t really looked back since. “I play with my friends whenever I can. But yes, I am a solo artist. Burlington is a small town with a rich music scene, which means everyone plays with everyone, so while I’ve had awesome bands before, I currently bring groups together for different shows. It means I get to play with a lot of people, which keeps the music really fresh with a constant input of new ideas and energies.”
Parsons began piano lessons at age five and picked up the saxophone a few years later, beginning a lasting obsession with blues and jazz. At summer camp, she learned guitar and began writing songs, then began performing at the now-defunct Purple Moon Pub, known for sending off local legend Grace Potter.
In this mini-gig, Parsons is playing a guitar made by Plante Guitar in Bristol, Vermont. “Micah the luthier and I are from the same town. We went to school together, so that’s special enough, but it gets even better. The soundboard is made with reclaimed redwood that originally was used as stadium seating for our local summer baseball league team, the Vermont Lake Monsters. (Lake Champlain is rumoured to have a lake monster, called Champ, who is very similar to the Loch Ness monster.) Micah got his hands on some of the wood when they redid the stadium. He used rosewood to make its lovely, sturdy neck. The rest of the body is made of tiger maple from the Allegheny Plateau area of Pennsylvania. My dad sunk a maple log into a spring when he was a kid, left it there, and years later, his friend, who is a woodworker, pulled it out and took it home to Vermont. He started to feel bad about taking it and showed my dad one day, who immediately thought it should be made into a guitar. Passing Micah’s luthier shop on his way home, my dad put two and two together and entrusted Micah with building a guitar – one of his first – and gifted it to me before one of my shows a few years later. The headstock has a stone inlay from the Mad River, the river that cuts through my home valley. It’s this little thing with a big, rich sound and an even bigger back-story. I love it so much. It carries a lot of history and memories and is very much alive.”
Speaking of live, it’s time we moved on to the video. You’ll see Parsons playing three of her songs, filmed in her apartment in Burlington using a Neumann KMS 105 handheld supercardioid condenser mic (her go-to for live performance and home studio recording). Notes from the musician follow along with links to her discography and website.
- Get Out of Bed: This song was inspired by the urgent, messy, beautiful demand to wake up, feel everything, and keep moving—through grief, rage, joy, and resistance. It’s a call to action, to community, to creation, and to showing up for life and each other with everything we’ve got.
- Lightbulb: I wrote this song as a birthday gift for my partner (presented alongside a cake—I’m not a heathen!) and it’s become one of my favorites to play live. It just has this nice rolling energy.
- Where Are You Now: I wrote this song a week before recording the album and tracked the demo kind of as an afterthought. But I am damn glad I did! It’s about fair-weather friends and the familiar ache of loneliness that seems to always find me, which comes more from the grind than anything else. There’s a line inspired by John Prine’s ‘Spanish Pipedream’ in there that really captures the essence of just wanting to throw it all away. It’s an homage to him as he’d just passed the year before.
