Mimi Parker had been dead for exactly three weeks the first time that her widower, Alan Sparhawk, stepped back on a stage. Trampled by Turtles—a nominal bluegrass band whose music has long overflowed the genre’s oft-narrow container—had released its 10th album, Alpenglow, during Parker’s final days in late 2022. So the band invited Sparhawk, a hometown inspiration who had become their champion and friend, to drive the two hours south from Duluth to Minneapolis to join them onstage at a record-release show, as he and Parker had done so many times.
In a blue haze, the band stood stoically to Sparhawk’s side while he strummed the first chords of Low’s “When I Go Deaf,” a hymn about finding grim silver linings amid the impossible ruins of oblivion. As they roared together into the song’s second half, Sparhawk repeatedly bent so far over his electric guitar that his blonde curls seemed nearly to sweep the floor, as if his body were about to break at the waist. And then, each time, the sound around him seemed to pull him back from that brink, to force him upright again. When it was over, he hugged founder Dave Simonett for a long time, as if grateful for the chance to be anywhere at all.
Thirteen months later, and another hour south in Minnesota, Trampled by Turtles held that same space for Sparhawk. They’d long talked about recording together, and soon after Sparhawk jumped on their bus as an unannounced guest during a summer 2023 tour alongside Willie Nelson, he had some songs that needed a home. During two days amid the wintry isolation of the fabled Pachyderm Studios, where the Turtles had just finished an EP of their own, Sparhawk led the band through nine songs—three he’d started with Parker but never finished, two he’d just recorded for a solo album, and four that portrayed his struggles and reckonings with life since Parker’s death. Where he had warped his voice beyond recognition on White Roses, My God, as if circuitry were enough to rewire grief itself, he sang these songs unadorned, the band’s steadfast harmonies growing like branches from his oaken tone. As improbable as it may seem, With Trampled by Turtles—a raw snapshot of perfectly articulated hurt, and the first steps of navigating it for the rest of one’s life—is one of the most compelling records of Sparhawk’s career.
The narrative start of these nine numbers actually arrives at the record’s middle, the centerpiece called “Screaming Song.” It is, as the stages of grief go, a retroactive document of Sparhawk’s fit of shock when Parker died of ovarian cancer. “When you flew out the window and into the sunset, I thought I would never stop screaming,” he sings of that moment, a faint lilt to his burly voice. Over the next two minutes, he repeatedly settles back into that primal sensation as he remembers catching his breath after each bout of paroxysms. “I’m trying to be cool here,” he offers finally, “but, inside, I’m screaming this song.” The band picks up the pace and volume, like a horse that’s broken its reins. Ryan Young’s fiddle starts to howl, as if doing Sparhawk the favor of telling everyone else exactly how fucked up he feels inside while letting the singer off the hook. For two decades, Trampled by Turtles have mostly been a very good string band best suited for summer festivals and wide-eyed singalongs; this performance gets to the knotty viscera of their old-time antecedents.
