The press release accompanying guitarist Shane Parish’s latest album, Repertoire, includes an essay penned by his collaborator and fellow guitarist Wendy Eisenberg. In the essay, Eisenberg describes Repertoire as an album that, “… brings you into the room and the breath of a true musician whose mastery does not overshadow his appreciation of the music that inspired it.”
The mastery to which Eisenberg refers is Parish’s seamless ability to rise above his highly evolved technical skill level as an improviser, arranger and composer, always allowing the true beauty of the music he’s playing to shine above all else.
Throughout Repertoire, released May 10 via Palilalia Records, Parish reduces 14 outsider standards from various musical genres—Kraftwerk’s “Europe Endless,” Alice Coltrane’s “Journey Into Satchidananda,” Aphex Twin’s “Avril 14th,” John Cage’s “Totem Ancestor” and more—allowing their melodies and their vital essences to take on a gently glowing body via the resonating steel strings of his guitar.
Each of these solo acoustic instrumental interpretations of songs that, perhaps, were never intended to be arranged for guitar, take on subtle and serene new hues.
“I have my ideas about guitar playing, and my interest in tambour, and making the instruments sound beautiful,” Parish says. “How I articulate phrases or use a combination of flesh and fingernail on my right hand, or slide into a note, there’s some ideal that I’m going for that I typically never reach. But that always draws me forward.”
The 46-year-old guitarist, improviser, educator and composer comes across as easy-going but intensely focused, discussing heady musical terrain as casually as one talks about the weather.
Parish has collaborated with Athens experimental music staples Michael Potter of The Electric Nature and John Kiran Fernandes of The Olivia Tremor Control, Organically Programmed and The Rishis.
He is also the driving force behind the math-punk mania of Ahleuchatistas. The trio’s current lineup is rounded out by bass player Trevor Dunn of Mr. Bungle, Melvins and Fantômas fame, and drummer Danny Piechocki, who played on the 2022 album, Expansion. The group wields an intensely composed and motorik lilt that Dunn describes as “pan-tonal poly-metric counterpoint.”
More recently, Parish played a key role in bringing to life avant-garde guitarist Bill Orcutt’s masterpiece LP Music For Four Guitars.
Since relocating from Asheville with his wife and daughter in 2021, Parish has taught guitar lessons to children at Lay Park Community Center.
“They call it the Beginner’s Guitar Club,” Parish says. “Some kids have more experience, and we have a lot of fun,” he laughs. “We’ve had some pretty rowdy sessions, but teaching these classes allows me to reach a larger community than my private students.”
Parish teaches a youth class for kids aged 8–12 and one for teenagers aged 12–17, playing everything from Raffi Cavoukian’s children’s classic “Down By the Bay” to improvising around an original tune that his younger students wrote together.
“We wrote a song about corndogs on the first day,” Parish says. “I freestyled some lyrics: ‘I like corndogs ‘cause they taste good / I like corndogs and everybody should.’ It was a big hit! They thought it was the funniest thing in the world and have continued working on it. Now we’re getting our ears wrapped around some fundamental changes.”
Parish teaches his older students “Malagueña,” Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona’s 1930s song featuring a traditional Spanish melody. “I had been teaching it for a while,” Parish says. “When I read Keith Richards’ biography, I learned it was a song that his grandfather—a jazz musician—taught to him. His grandfather said, ‘If you can play ‘Malagueña’ you can play anything.’”
One of Parish’s recent gigs landed him a role in Bill Orcutt’s Guitar Quartet, playing alongside a world-class assemblage of guitarists, featuring Orcutt, Wendy Eisenberg and Ava Mendoza.
Orcutt is an influential musical figure known for his role in the experimental and noise-punk scenes. His abrasive and improvisational approach to guitar in the Miami-based outfit Harry Pussy bore a striking influence on acts ranging from Sonic Youth and Royal Trux to Wolf Eyes and Oneida.
Parish met Orcutt in 2016 when they were both booked to play a small music festival in Durham. Parish’s solo acoustic CD, Undertaker Please Drive Slow, had recently been released by John Zorn’s Tzadik Records. “[Bill] watched us play that night,” Parish says. “I don’t know how to work a room or anything like that, so I just gave him a CD right after the show and left him alone.”
Parish also hails from Miami originally. Orcutt now lives in San Francisco but returns to play an annual Miami show. He invited Parish to play with him.
For years, Parish had been posting to YouTube and Instagram his arrangements of some of his favorite songs. Some of the videos went mildly viral, and started people talking about the music. It was his interpretation of Alice Coltrane’s meditative “Journey in Satchidananda” that piqued Orcutt’s interest.
“It’s a beloved song that’s not easy to play on guitar,” Orcutt says. “I thought Shane’s version really captured the spirit of the composition.”
Later, Orcutt approached Parish to transcribe the material he’d worked up for Music For Four Guitars.
“It was clear from his videos that he was skilled at transcription, and as a full-time musician he was probably looking for paid work.”
Orcutt hired Parish to transcribe the record and a working relationship was born.
“When I heard the Guitar Quartet it was clear to me what a score would look like and that it was doable in an orderly fashion,” Parish says.
The two started playing shows around the world with the Guitar Quartet. In March, Orcutt’s label Palilalia Records released a double LP featuring live expansions upon the Quartet’s songs recorded in the Netherlands and Denmark.
The live LP captures the twisting and clanging strings moving in unified rhythms and structures as though Orcutt’s propulsive musical motions could continue expanding outward forever.
“As an arranger and transcriber, Shane has incredible attention to detail and a devotion to get it right,” Orcutt says. “As a performer and improvisor, he’s passionate and has terrific drive and charisma. On stage, he’s impossible not to like.”
In time, Orcutt approached Parish about releasing an album of the arrangements he’s been posting online.
Big band leader Duke Ellington once famously said, “I don’t need time, I need a deadline.” Parish invokes these words while explaining how the album’s constituent parts had been amassing for years. “I had made all of these arrangements for these videos over years, and after I’d get a good take I never looked back,” Parish says. “But I still had those arrangements somewhere. When Bill offered to pay for me to go into a studio to record these songs and to press them on vinyl, I thought, ‘I’d better get cracking!’” Parish goes on to say. “That helped me organize my time around hitting that single goal.”
On its own terms, Repertoire is a stunningly gorgeous show of melodies being stroked with exquisite passion. The pure sounds that Parish elicits are as arresting as the songs he chose to arrange. In the end, the album illustrates that Parish is more than capable of playing in a traditionally, romantically beautiful way. It adds depth to his presence while defying the polarity in the mania of Ahleuchatistas or the intense structures of Orcutt’s Guitar Quartet. Here, he makes each song his own, all the while defying flash and acrobatics, drawing out the essential beauty of each song.
WHO: Shane Parish, John Kiran Fernandes
WHEN: Thursday, May 23, 8 p.m.
WHERE: Hendershot’s
HOW MUCH: $10
Like what you just read? Support Flagpole by making a donation today. Every dollar you give helps fund our ongoing mission to provide Athens with quality, independent journalism.
