Brian Parker

I'm always looking for ways to bridge the gap between the music we hear and the music we hear about. The sounds on records from Michael Jackson, Prince, Hall and Oates, and The Police seem to be engrained in me as these warm, textural elements that are obviously coming back in popularity now. But my own interests led me to the likes of hometown heroes like Pharrell Williams, Timbaland, and Missy Elliot, who dominated the early 2000s with a quirky, but raw pop minimalism that defined the Virginia sound.

I'm writing songs that people can sing along to, that will hopefully get stuck in your head. It's not just music for myself and for my own satisfaction, but half the challenge is creating something you enjoy playing that people enjoy listening to over and over again. I'm constantly trying to blend sounds that come from my musical inspirations and less from fleeting trends, and I'm writing hyperbolic lyrics to purposely blow my emotional muses out of proportion.

It's interesting to create a sort of character out of my own flaws and desires. The music allows me to live in a world where everything is exaggerated, darker, and more expressive than if I were just laying out my emotions on a page, like a diary. I'm constantly struggling with the tension between reality and a sort of created space where my music exists, and it keeps opening up gaps for more interesting ways to write a song.

BP