Name: CHARLIE PARR w/Water Cat
Start: 2026-01-16T18:00:00-06:00
End: 2026-01-16T21:00:00-06:00
Location: The Ripple Center

$CHARLIE PARR w\/Water Cat$

FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2026
The Ripple Center Opera House – Aitkin, MN
Doors open: 5pm
Water Cat: 6pm
Charlie Parr: 7pm
They don't make them like Parr anymore...
(No Depression Magazine)
Join us for a concert with the inimitable country blues/folk legend Charlie Parr, and discover why critics call him "a Minnesota treasure", with an opening set by Water Cat. Charlie was recently inducted into the Minnesota Blues Society Hall of Fame.
• VIP tickets are limited. VIP ticket holders receive reserved 1st, 2nd, & 3rd row seating (first come, first served).
In the music of Charlie Parr, there is a sincere conviction and earnest drive to create. The Minnesota-born guitarist, songwriter, and interpreter of traditional music has released 19 albums over two decades and has been known to perform up to 275 shows a year. Parr is a folk troubadour in the truest sense: taking to the road between shows, writing and rewriting songs as he plays, fueled by a belief that music is eternal and cannot be claimed or adequately explained. The bluesman poet pulls closely from the sights and sounds around him, his lyrical craftsmanship built by his influences. The sounds from his working-class upbringing—including Folkways legends such as Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie—imbue Parr’s music with stylistic echoes of blues and folk icons of decades past. Parr sees himself merely as a continuer of a folk tradition: “I feel like I stand on a lot of big shoulders,” he said in an interview. “I hope that I’ve brought a little bit of myself to the music.”
With a discography simultaneously transcendental in nature and grounded in roots music, Charlie Parr is the humble master of the 21st century folk tradition. Parr started recording in Duluth in 2002. Life in the port town on Lake Superior has a way of bleeding into his work the same way his childhood in Austin, Minnesota does. Parr self-released his debut album, Criminals and Sinners, and did the same for his sophomore album 1922 (2002). With growing popularity abroad, Parr signed with Red House Records in 2015, where he recorded break-out albums Stumpjumper (2015) and Dog (2017). He is currently a part of the Smithsonian Folkways label. Parr’s music has an overwhelming sense of being present and mindful, and his sound is timeless.
Water Cat is a mix of original, Americana, folk, blues, and French/world music that can put one at ease, bring tears to the eye, or light a fire. A little bit Janis Joplin, a bit Edith Piaf, with a helping of The Devil Makes Three and many others, Water Cat can make either make your ears groove or your body move.