Grayson Haver Currin at Pitchfork:
Parker believes he briefly lost his own tone at Berklee when he tried to adhere to jazz pedagogy and the way that esteemed jazz guitarists, like former Berklee professor Pat Metheny, often sounded. It was a necessary compromise, he reckons, as he developed his skills. Still, he didn’t feel like himself. When he finally quit, he considered moving to New York but worried the problem would only get worse.
“I felt like the thing for me to do was move to New York and play jazz, but I was scared. It was really expensive, and I didn’t feel very confident,” he admits. “I used to see musicians who seemed like they had some individual ideas move to New York. They would come back and sound like everybody else.”
In Boston, his second school had been the jazz section of Tower Records, where musicians manning the registers would sneak him a discount. He knew there was a Tower opening in Chicago, so he decided to try his luck there. He’d sell records, save money, and practice by playing as much as possible.
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