Page 17 - BiTS_12_DECEMBER_2021

BiTS INTERVIEW: Walter Parks

Walter Parks is a songwriter, vocalist, guitarist and bassist originally from Jacksonville,
Florida now living in Saint Louis, MO. Walter Parks founded several musical groups, Wingtips,
The Nudes, "Swamp Cabbage", Walter Parks & the Unlawful Assembly and also toured as a
sideman for Richie Havens. Parks was with Havens for about 10 years.

BiTS: Okay, let’s make a start then. Tell me something about how you became interested in music
in the first place. Was there music in your house when you were a kid?

WP: Well, my mother was a piano player but nothing professional. It was a pastime for her, so I
think I inherited the ability, but I took
a liking to music pretty much on my

own without much exposure to it
except for country music, but I didn’t
really favour that too much. What we
call country music here in the US,
which is everything that comes out of
Nashville and so on. But I started
studying viola. I can’t really say why I

enjoyed classical music or wanted to
take that route, other than the fact that
we were taking what they called field
trips — just leaving school and getting
on the school buses and going to the

auditorium and hearing the local
symphony orchestra play and there’s
just something about the sound of all
of those timbres coming together, I almost loved, Ian, the warm-up to an orchestra when
everything’s kind of out of tune and they’re all sort of getting their footing sonically. That warm-up
sound before the orchestra started created so much anticipation in me that it drew me into classical
music, so I started studying viola and that’s kind of how I got my start with it, with music. It’s a

little odd.

BiTS: What age did you switch to guitar, Walter?

WP: Well, I switched to guitar because at that time when I first started viola, it was 1968 or 69 and
Jimi Hendrix was really coming into popularity and a lot of the what we now call hippy music was
popular, so it just wasn’t cool to be playing in a symphony orchestra as a young boy and I kind of

tried out the guitar or took an interest in it just to keep myself from getting beat up in school, more
than anything [chuckles]. I still had the desire to play music, but I was like, hmm, this is not going
to be good for my own survival here.

BiTS: This upbringing of yours was in Florida, I believe. Was that Jacksonville?

WP: Yes, in Jacksonville, Florida.

BiTS: What sort of music was around you at that time in Florida, I mean?