This is my second time sitting down with Wes Parker, a musician from RVA primarily known for his comedic DIY show persona, ‘Skunk’. Wes had made some waves in the local scene a couple months back when he dropped an extremely well-produced music video for his single ‘Tattoo’ (which I’d highly recommend giving a listen to if you have a minute). So, when he reached out about a new single he was working on called ‘Den’, I was really excited to chat.
Wes strikes me as a down-to-earth, humble guy who just likes making music. He’s charismatic and friendly, quick-witted and sincere— self-deprecating in a perfectly endearing way. But most notably, Wes is very present in a conversation. He answers questions directly and with a sense of earnest responsibility to accurately depict all the flighty and sort of woo-woo feelings that art and music tackle.
He used to struggle with a drug problem, a time in his life he refers to as “a bit of an opiate thing”, and attempts to parse through the complicated wake of feelings that time has left him with. “It’s really weird. I have a hard time letting go — of relationships, of friendships, of times in my life that felt… I don’t know… intense.”
“I get really obsessed with this idea of breathing in and out of people’s lives: friendships, relationships… I have a hard time letting go. I have a hard time moving on from versions of myself that used to exist. ‘Den’ is a reflection on this time [active addiction] — almost a romanticization of that time…. The fake joy… you feel so close to these people you’re around but it’s just not real.”
‘Den’ is a single from his latest EP as a solo artist, Splinter, which is a collection of Parker’s road-tested hits — the songs he’s played live on tour.
“Splinter is really just a bunch of old songs that I felt fit together. It all just sounded right [...] Sometimes you play a song live and it just doesn’t sound right. It’s nice to get to play around with it. [...] I decided to call it Splinter — one because there’s a song on the EP called ‘Splinter’— but also because that’s kind of what these moments feel like. A little splinter stuck in your skin. You’re like well…. I don’t have any tweezers, so I guess I have to just stare and think about it.”
This EP is more twangy than music he’s made in the past. Slower songs with pedal steel and what he describes as “some straight up grunge songs with weird little rock parts.”
One thing I did want to ask Wes about was his opinion on the shifting landscape of the album-based music industry. Things are increasingly veering towards singles. Spotify’s algorithm seems to pretty much exclusively recommend single songs over entire albums and, from a more macro perspective, absolutely everything is getting more short form. I asked him: What would be your defense as an artist, for longer albums?
Here’s what he had to say:
“Tarantula!! There’s this local Richmond guy named Vlad who released a whole album called Tarantula and it is so sick. There’s an experience of listening to a full album, a full body of work, that is so different to listening to singles. You get to really dig deep and explore a certain idea or a certain story – tackle it from all angles in a way that you just can’t with a single. I don’t know why anybody wouldn’t want more depth from their art.”
‘Den’ is now available to stream on Spotify, Apple Music or wherever you get your music. For more information on Wes Parker, including upcoming tour dates, please follow @phat_wes on Instagram.
