Wes Parker (of Camp Howard) / Christian James / Good Deal

A man who contains multitudes, Parker is more than just a musician. With surprisingly active Youtube and TikTok accounts (amassing almost 200,000 followers on the latter), Parker has been making short form comedy videos for a number of years now. New artists have been using the format and similar platforms to promote their music, so I was curious to hear what he thought of such avenues, saying, “you hear people say it’s a necessary evil, and I think that’s true, but I think people can get by without it, I just don’t know how.” Parker continued, “I used to make little horizontal – I thought of them as pieces of art, and I still do. But, my old videos on Instagram… we made one of these two guys who were drinking gasoline, or trying to build a homemade helicopter and it blew up. I really thought they were such pieces of art, which is why I was so resistant to Tik Tok because I was like, ‘it’s cheapening this work that I’ve done.’ And, eventually, I was just like, ‘who am I kidding. I gotta get with the program, or be an old curmudgeon…’ And who knows if we’d even be sitting here if I hadn’t done that. I do think it’s important, it just sucks. I think music marketing yourself, posting daily short form content, is just soul sucking. It sucks. But so does a job. Which sucks more? Me waiting tables for the rest of my life, or me saying, ‘screw it,’ and being a little cringy on the internet so people hear my music.” - Andrew Bonieskie