Erik Parker has been a lot of things — guitarist, vocalist, live sound engineer, recording producer, guitar teacher, Nirvana tribute act, Satanic gospel cabaret performer, and teenage busker in the Frankston Mall. He joins us to talk about what a music career actually looks like when the work keeps shifting and expanding: the burnout, the reinvention, the collaborations you have to book before the beer is finished, and why he had to learn to get nervous again.

It's also a reunion — Erik was one of Lyndon's guitar students about 30 years ago — so there's a warmth and honesty here that goes deeper than the usual career chat. We cover grief, performance anxiety, the wedding gig where he refused to learn a Snow Patrol song (and then absolutely had to learn it), and the night his LPG gas tank fell off his car on the Calder Freeway, closing the freeway and ending a run of Adelaide gigs before they'd even begun.

Find Erik Parker on Instagram

Pain In The Arts is a Creative Life Chronicles production.

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Recorded and produced at Morning Phase Recording Room.

Original theme music by Lyndon Wesley:

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