Music Review & Interview: Parker Twomey, ‘All This Life’
Carol spoke with the Dallas-based up-and-coming singer-songwriter and reviewed his sparkling debut album
Parker Twomey. Photo credit: Tom Smouse, 2022.
Recently, I had a chance to speak with Dallas native Parker Twomey, whose debut album drops tomorrow—July 15. Though he’s just 21, Twomey already has a storied past and a fair bit of press coverage for someone of his age and stage of his career, because he started unusually young: The multi-instrumentalist (keys, guitar and harmonica) started gigging with his dad and playing in his church band before he was in his teens and, not too long after that, performing his own material at a range of venues around the city.
At age 16 he started working at Dallas studio Modern Electric, doing odd jobs and learning about sound engineering and recording. That’s where he got to know iconoclastic-yet-old-school country artist Paul Cauthen and soon set off on a hard-touring adventure through the U.S. and Europe beginning in 2019. “I graduated high school and immediately went on tour,” Twomey (pronounced TOO-mee) says. Sounds exhausting, huh? Nope: “I feel like in some ways touring is just a big field trip because it’s like a little vacation, and you’re doing what you love so it’s not like work.”
I’d find that hard to believe if I didn’t get to see Twomey in person mid-tour last month, when Cauthen and his band stopped by to play a set at Blue Ox Music Festival in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Twomey hopped off the tour bus at 7 p.m.; unloaded gear for 45 minutes; posed for a quick photo shoot with my friend, photographer Tom Smouse; and then sat down with me for a chat before getting ready for Cauthen’s late night main-stage set scheduled for less than two hours later. All the while, looking as relaxed and refreshed as if he really were on vacation.
In his debut single “I’d Be Your Man,” Twomey sings “I’ve never been that good at wasting time,” and truer lyrics have never been written. Even when the pandemic lockdown forced a pause in his touring schedule, he used the time to write and record his debut album, All This Life. “I’m very ambitious,” he told me. “It’s important to make a very defined tangible goal for yourself and let that guide you in all your decisions. I would love to play Red Rocks as a solo artist, and the Grand Ole Opry. I’ve gotten to actually do those things as a pianist playing with Paul, and he’s shown me a path to do that.”
Parker Twomey. Photo credit: Tom Smouse, 2022.
Touring seems to me like it’d be a strenuous, potentially chaotic business, but Twomey loves it. “l find touring much more fulfilling since I’ve understood that it’s about the people that you meet along the way,” he says. “I never really knew what living in the moment was until I was busy on tour. It’s something I’ve struggled with, getting really introspective and introverted sometimes as a writer. I love to just sit in my room for a week and hack away at thoughts.”
In addition to his album, he wrote the rough draft of a screenplay during lockdown and works on prose fiction occasionally, as well as journaling nearly every day. But music is his first love and main creative outlet, Twomey says: “I really like songs because they’re much more compact and I feel like I can convey one or just a few specific ideas. I’m a perfectionist, so some songs take months to complete.”
That attention to detail shows in his songwriting, in the enjoyable complexity of his songs. Often when I really dig into lyrics I find they paint a single clear story for me. It could be my literal, story-oriented mind drawing conclusions, or that sometimes songwriters really do intend to impart one concept in their songs. With many of Twomey’s songs, literal meaning dances away from me. Is “Pneumonia” about a fever dream, lovers who can’t be honest with one another, or feeling sick over the state of the nation and public discourse? Maybe none or all of those things, and from my perspective it depends what day you ask me.
After a few listens, my brain stopped trying to assign literal overall meanings to some tracks; instead I relished certain lines or turns of phrase for their originality or for how they make me feel. I admire the carefully crafted structures of the words, like in “Little Stars”: “I’ve searched for years to find the good will in your name / But it’s found residence in the pockets of my jeans.” (Another song where I can’t decide what he’s talking about—a person, or cigarettes, or maybe weed?—but it’s evocative any way I interpret the lines.)
I also love how he shifts some lyrics’ meaning by swapping out a word or two. In “Little Stars,” “if the creek don’t rise” becomes “if the creek runs dry” the next time the chorus comes around. In “What Good Is Running?,” a similar refrain poses different conundrums: “What good is running if you don’t know where to go?” Then, “What good is loving when you’ve got no one to hold?” And in the final, fatalistic verse: “What good is living, dear? / you’ve got so far to go.”
Parker Twomey. Photo credit: Tom Smouse, 2022.
Lyrically, my favorite song on the album has to be “Loving You Too Easy,” which Twomey says he wrote “in a flow-state,” words and melody coming to him simultaneously. “Those flow-state songs tend to be more lyrically driven,” he shared in an email. And how! Belying its title, the song is a rumination on a complicated relationship or love affair, packed with verbal twists that make me think about simple concepts in whole new ways: “My reflection in your eyes is in constant change.” “Maybe the love I’m smoking is laced.” “Cast my love on the sunset that hides behind each mountain’s face.” “There’s this place that I’ve seen but never been.”
Musically, I felt the same way as I do about the lyrics. Initially I found myself trying to trace the lineage of the sound: Those drums sound like they come from the eighties; that beat reminds me of a Jason Isbell song; there’s a 1970s folk flavor to this one; Twomey’s voice sometimes echoes the mellifluous timbre of Jim Croce or James Taylor. I do this partly to try and describe music to readers so they have reference points, and partly because I want to understand the roots or heritage of new music and its connection with classic Americana.
But again, as I did with the meaning of these songs, I eventually let go of those threads and let Twomey’s music exist as its own sound. Yes, all the things I said in the previous paragraph are observations I made, but overall, these songs feel wholly original and bring all those elements into a sound that feels modern yet outside of time.
Sometimes—typically at the beginning or end of a song—the instrumentation is pared down to a guitar, a harmonica, a few tinkling piano notes. Those moments are like palate cleansers that keep the more lush, layered overall sound of the album fresh and thrilling. Drums and strings and keyboards and guitars and dreamlike backing vocals sweep the listener along effortlessly. Twomey’s voice is undeniably young, but you can practically hear it developing and maturing as he sings. It’s already a compelling instrument and it’s only going to get stronger. When he hits perfection in some of the tracks, it’s breathtaking.
I’ve seen Twomey describe the album as “celestial at times,” and I can’t think of a better way to put it myself. There are definite country elements, a strong folk vibe, and tinges of pop and rock throughout, but the whole is way more original than the sum of its parts. All in all, this is a captivating debut from an artist I can only imagine is at the start of a meteoric rise and a long, interesting musical journey.
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is a full-time marketing copywriter and the main music journalist and social media publicist for Adventures in Americana. In addition to studying the guitar and songwriting, Carol’s additional creative side hustle is writing self-proclaimed “trashy” novels under the pseudonym T.A. Berkeley!
Tom Smouse. Photo credit: Chris Taylor.
Tom Smouse is an innovative collaborator with 20 years of experience in the Minnesota music industry. As a professional photographer, podcaster, and music journalist, sharing stories from the community remains his core passion. When not at a show you can find him at a record store.
