Fallbrook native Christine Parker left her job as a therapist in the midwest to return to San Diego in pursuit of a music career. Her parents discovered their daughter’s affinity for music early on, soon realizing she had perfect pitch, a rare ability by which a person can identify or re-create a specific musical note without the benefit of a reference tone. Trained on piano in the Suzuki method starting at the age of four, Parker picked up the guitar in high school and is self-taught as a guitarist and vocalist.
“At the encouragement of friends and family, I tried recording some of my own songs with Pro Tools on a laptop just to see if I could do it, and to see if they sounded good,” says Parker. Determined to master Pro Tools in spite of what she calls “chronic technical ineptness,” she took a month off from her work as a therapist in Missouri to take a series of audio recording classes at TRAC/Studio West.
Prior to starting the studio recording of her debut album, Parker made the decision to move back to San Diego so she could focus on her music more seriously. “My move back to California was definitely strategic,” she says. “I started thinking about where I could move that would set me up well to have more opportunities with music. I had already made the connection with Studio West here in San Diego, not to mention I grew up in Fallbrook, and my parents still live up there. I figured if I caught a lucky break, San Diego is not too far from L.A.”
The singer-songwriter raised over $9,000 with an online Kickstarter campaign to help fund her recording costs and the manufacturing of her CD. Her debut full-length Looking Glass, was released in October 2013. “Each song was written in a different season of my life, the oldest being written thirteen years ago, the newest last year. I began thinking of how I’ve changed a lot over the last thirteen years, but also how I feel like I am now more ‘me’ than I’ve ever been. I realized that I could take each song and know exactly what was happening in my life at that time, exactly what I felt…it dawned on me that each song served as a mirror, reflecting back to me who I was and what was happening in that moment.”
The album features an all-star roster of local players including Bobby Sale on drums, Tommy Aros on percussion, Rick Nash on bass, Marc Intravaia on guitars, Dennis Caplinger on mandolin, fiddle, banjo, and dobro, and Carter Dewberry on cello.
Lestat’s in Normal Heights is one of Parker’s favorite local stages. “On three or four separate occasions during my set, several separate individuals and couples stopped dead in their tracks outside the front entrance. It was clear they hadn’t planned to come to the show, and probably didn’t even know who I was, but they stopped and listened for a moment, walked in, paid the door price, and sat down.”
“It’s an affirming moment as a songwriter and performer, to have people who, after only hearing me play for a few moments, decided to spontaneously interrupt their evening plans and come to the show.”
Her Between You and Me EP was released in Autumn 2016.