BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS
Born: Kevin Richard Parker
Description: Songwriter, USA
Origin: Fremantle, Perth, Western Australia
Instruments: Piano
Music Styles: Psychedelic rock, alternative
Location: Australia
Date Born: 20 January 1986
Syney, Australia
CONTACT DETAILS
Web Site: tameimpala
Other Links: See below:
YOUTUBE VIDEO
BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
Kevin Richard Parker (born 20 January 1986) is an Australian multi-instrumentalist and psychedelic rock musician, singer, songwriter and record producer. He is best known as the leader of the band Tame Impala, for which he writes and records the majority of the music.
Born in Sydney, but spending the majority of his life in Perth, Western Australia, Parker’s father, Jerry, is from Zimbabwe and his mother, Rosalind, is from South Africa. Parker’s parents separated and divorced when he was 3. From the age of 12 Kevin lived in Cottesloe with his father, stepmother Rhonda and brother Stephen. Parker grew up with a passion for music from a young age. Parker’s father “played a lot of music as a hobby” and was a “big part of Kevin’s musical upbringing”. His first experience playing an instrument was accompanying his father on guitar, “I learned guitar by playing rhythm guitar to his Shadows leads. He wanted to play Shadows lead riffs, because he loves Hank B. Marvin, and he got me to play the chords in the background.” Parker’s father also played music by The Beatles, The Beach Boys and Supertramp in a cover band, which Parker believes was where he “got his love of melody”, which has been a significant part of Parker’s music. Parker also recalls “amusing [him]self by singing along to the vacuum cleaner when his mum was cleaning.” Parker’s father later purchased Kevin his first guitar.
At age 11, Parker took up the drums, just like his brother, and later was making “excessively melodic music from about the age of 12 to 15”, which was “really weird and repetitive and almost genre-less”, by recording his drumming and overdubbing guitar and other instruments in lo-fi experiments. Speaking about this Parker said “I’ve always recorded music. When I was 12, I used to set up two tape machines and multi-track myself. First, I’d record a beat on the drums, then, I’d play that tape into another tape recorder while playing keyboard; then I’d take that tape and play bass guitar along with the drums and keyboard. I’d keep adding instruments. I did that for a long time until my dad bought me an 8-track, and then I continued recording music by myself, even if I was in other bands at the same time.” This hobby turned into an obsession for Parker who was “just doing music all the time, I never did any homework, I’d just spend every night in the garage recording music.” Parker got his first eight-track recorder at age 16.
At age 13, Parker met fellow Tame Impala member Dominic Simper in their high school music class, whom he found a musical connection with. Parker and Simper started off playing covers of Rage Against the Machine, Unwritten Law, Sunk Loto and Korn songs, along with Dan Debuf, who is now a presenter on 2Day FM. In his late-teens, Parker discovered the many ’60s and ’70s psychedelic rock artists that would have a huge influence on his music, saying that “I got into bands like Cream and Jefferson Airplane in a big way, and loved the sound of their recordings. My friends were listening to bands like Brainticket and Demon Fuzz who opened my eyes to different ways of constructing songs. The Beatles way of singing vocal lines often crept into the recordings because they are so unique, whereas the elements we take from those other bands are usually common among a few other bands we listen to.”
By the time he was 18, Parker was “playing in the pub scene” and at the time was writing “heavy 70’s-style almost prog-rock songs, like Blue Cheer”.
Parker later had a job as a law clerk, delivering court documents in Perth. It was here that he would write songs in his head amidst the boredom. He would later quit this job.
Parker’s father always warned Kevin about getting into the music industry. “My dad always warned me not to choose music as a career. He got quite worried and said “if you do music as your job, as the thing that puts food on the table, then it will instantly ruin its magic, it won’t be mysterious and fun any more, it would just be like work”.” Parker believed what his father had told him and he went onto university for a while, studying engineering. “I wanted to please my dad in a way. I had no idea what I wanted to do, because I didn’t enjoy anything other than music.” Parker said “I hated it, and one day I decided to change to astronomy. I knew that I would be poor and I just wanted to do whatever was fun.” It was here in an astronomy lecture that Parker saw a slide that he would later paint and turn into the artwork for the Tame Impala EP. However, Parker couldn’t give up his original dream. “I was at uni, and a couple of months before we got signed, I had submitted to the reality that I wasn’t actually going to be a famous musician and I should just get on with my career. So that was when I started to knuckle down and actually do stuff at uni. But at the same time, I could never passionately give my attention to anything other than music. Like, it was a disease. I would not be able to listen to a word in lectures because I’d just be thinking about my new song.”
On his way to his last astronomy exam, Parker was contacted by Modular Recordings who wished to sign Tame Impala to their label. Upon hearing this, Parker turned his car around from the exam and drove home to pursue his first love, making music.
Career
Parker is a part of the large and diverse Perth music scene, where he plays in various different bands in addition to his main project, Tame Impala. Commenting on this, Parker said “it’s a really close-knit scene, quiet, separated from the rest of Australia” and “Tame Impala is just one sliver of the giant amount of noise-making that we do as a circle of friends. I don’t feel bad doing the recording by myself because I don’t expect that input in their bands…to us Tame Impala is just Kevin Parker’s project and everyone has a project.”
The Dee Dee Dums
In 2005, Parker formed the basis of what would later become Tame Impala, when he started the band The Dee Dee Dums, featuring current Tame Impala member, Dominic Simper and Luke Epstein (drums). The Dee Dee Dums achieved some local acclaim, getting second place at the 2005 AmpFest and winning third place later that year in the state final of The Next Big Thing. In October 2006 Epstein was replaced by drummer Sam Devenport, Epstein going on to play with Sugarpuss. They later went on to win the Western Australia state final of the National Campus Band Competition.
Musical equipment and sound
Parker’s sound is heavily reliant on various effects pedals to achieve his distinctive guitar tones. The following is a list of Parker’s guitars and effects pedals.
Guitars
Parker tunes his guitars down two semitones to D standard to relieve the tension on the strings and to experiment with the different sounds the tuning offers.
Fender Roadhouse Stratocaster – arctic white with brown shell pickguard and a rosewood fretboard – Parker’s primary guitar, used in the studio and live from 2008 to 2011. It appears that Parker has stopped using this guitar as it has been damaged.
Rickenbacker 335 Jetglo – used in the early days of Tame Impala from 2008 to 2009, rarely seen between 2010 and 2011. As of 2012, this is Parker’s primary guitar.
Hagström Impala – purchased by Parker in 2010 and used frequently in conjunction with his Stratocaster. Has been used live by Simper as of 2012.
Epiphone Les Paul – tobacco sunburst – seen live with The Dee Dee Dums in 2006–2007, not seen since.
Effects pedals
These are the effects pedals that Parker has been seen with in his pedal board as of 2011:
TC Electronic PolyTune
Boss TU-3 Tuner Pedal
Boss AB-2 2-Way Selector
Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Reverb Pedal
Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Nano Reverb Pedal
Boss BD-2 Blues driver
Dunlop DVP1 Volume Pedal
Boss VE-20 Vocal Performer
Boss FV-50L Volume Pedal
Boss FS-5U Footswitch
Dunlop Cry Baby Wah Pedal
Dunlop MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay Pedal
Dunlop MXR Dyna Comp Compression Pedal
DOD FX25 Envelope Filter Pedal
Electro-Harmonix Small Stone Phaser Pedal
Dunlop Fuzz Face Fuzz Pedal
Diamond Vibrato Pedal
Moog MoogerFooger MF-105 MuRF
Seymour Duncan KTG-1 rack unit
Essentially, the key components to Parker’s pedal setup is a Holy Grail reverb into a Blues Driver into a Carbon Copy delay into a Dyna Comp into a Small Stone phaser into a Fuzz Face and then into a Diamond Vibrato (vibrato added during Lonerism-era). The reverb into a fuzz and phasers set to a slow rate are the hallmarks of Parker’s guitar sound, which has influenced many modern psychedelic rock bands to have a similar setup, which Parker says “it’s the most flattering thing in the world to hear a band ripping you off. I know some people get pissed off by it, but if I ever hear an artist and I can tell they’re using a phaser pedal the way I do, it’s a massive compliment. It makes you feel like you’re making an impression, having an impact on people, which is really humbling, flattering”.
Amplifiers
Vox AC30 – typically an AC30H2 since Innerspeaker onwards
Roland KC-150 Keyboard Amp – used alongside the AC30 for DI guitar-tones since Lonerism onwards, mostly likely used in conjunction with the Seymour Duncan KTG-1 rack unit.