Scott Parsons has been making music for most of his 65 years. With six albums behind him, including one recorded live in Switzerland with his old band Jupiter Wise, and another recorded last year, The Gates of No Return, he’s as busy as he’s always been. Parsons is also a social activist — he’s used Japanese style Bunraku puppetry for school presentations about children with disabilities, founded P.E.I.’s Black Cultural Society, and worked with at-risk youth. For his social work, as well as his achievements in music, he was honoured with the 2021 Music P.E.I. Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2022 Stompin’ Tom Award for P.E.I. Last fall, he was inducted into the 2023 Order of P.E.I. Saltscapes spoke with Scott Parsons about milkshakes with Gene MacLellan, the two world wars and the history that lives inside.
Listening to your music, I hear an accomplished guitarist.
Lucien Leroux taught me to finger pick. I never took lessons with George Antoniak, but just being around George is good for any musician. He was one of the best guitarists I’ve ever worked with.
And you played bass for Gene MacLellan?
I did. Gene and I were good friends. As a teen, he’d let me listen to him and whatever famous people he had recording at his house. We’d go to the Frosty Treat in Kensington, get a burger, fries, and milkshake. The last years of Gene’s life, I played bass for him.
How old were you when you started playing music?
There’s a picture with my oldest brother holding me in his arms. I’m probably two, holding a little plastic electric guitar.
Were your parents musical?
My mother could sing. My dad always played guitar up in his room. He carried a guitar with him all through World War II. His father had been in World War I. Black men weren’t allowed to join the military, so they joined the No. 2 Construction Battalion.
I can see where your interest in Black history comes from.
Well, I’m part Black, part Scottish, English, and Mi’kmaq, too. I identify very much with the Black community, but I’ve been to Scotland and England to meet my relatives.
How do Islanders think of you?
The hip-hop guys call me “Wonder Breed.” I was like, “What are you talking about?” They said, “Scott, we only mean good by that because you can play all these different styles — blues, country, reggae, folk.” I can sing in Gaelic — it just doesn’t look right. I’m always the oddball at the ceilidh.
Your style really is impossible to nail down.
That’s just to make sure I never got signed to any record label. I never stuck to just being a blues player. Reggae is my favorite music to play.
I hear reggae in your song “What I am.”
That song was used in 1993 for the United Nations International Conference on the Rights of the Child. I was working as a cameraman. They needed a theme song for the conference, so I stuck my head out from behind the camera, and said, “I’ve got a song.” They were like, “Did that cameraman just speak?” They critiqued it in front of me, and said, “Yeah, we’re going to use your song.”
What does that song mean to you?
It’s about being mixed race. A friend of mine, Stella Shepard, introduced me to her uncle who said, “The colour’s been washed out of me, but the history still lives inside.” I used that line in a song about Stella.
Do you feel his words apply to you?
I can relate to that like I relate to Bob Marley, because he was mixed race himself. That always meant something to me personally.