Minnesota indie-rock hero Alan Sparhawk is still finding his path after Low

When Alan Sparhawk took the stage with longtime fans and friends Trampled by Turtles at the Armory in Minneapolis just after Thanksgiving 2022, the emotions in the room were stark and palatable. He sang one of his best-loved ballads, “When I Go Deaf,” imagining a time he’ll “stop writing songs, stop scratching out lines.”

The longtime co-leader of the beloved Duluth band Low, though, now admits he was “in a total fog” at that pivotal moment.

“I was still enduring the shock of it,” Sparhawk recounted. “I was still finding my way out.”

Talking by phone two weeks ago as his tour van rolled out of Duluth into Wisconsin — the start of a roundabout tour that ends at First Avenue on Thursday — Sparhawk still seems to be finding his way forward as a musician.

After a fascinating three-decade music career already loaded with many unexpected turns, the Minnesota indie-rock vet’s most exploratory phase yet has resulted in two solo albums that are as different from each other as they are from his old band Low.

Last fall, Sub Pop Records released his truly solo LP, “White Roses, My God,” laced with electronic grooves and eerily soulful vocal effects. Next month, Sub Pop is issuing another, far more accessible but equally emotional Sparhawk album titled “With Trampled by Turtles,” featuring his old buds as his backing band and harmony partners.

Sparhawk lost his former singing partner in Low, Mimi Parker, to cancer a few weeks before that Armory appearance. She was also his childhood sweetheart, wife and mother to their two young-adult children.

The woman the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde called “my favorite singer,” Parker could make Sparhawk’s most pained and unsettled musings sound serene and beautiful. Suddenly, though, she wasn’t there when he started making music again, a sad reality Sparhawk pinpointed as a starting point for both of these varied new records.

“In the past, I would get to the point where I had some vocals that sounded alright and lyrics I could stand, somehow she’d be able to make something that was two-dimensional three-dimensional,” Sparhawk, 56, remembered.

“Without her, it’s hard to tell if anything I’m doing now is really any good. That’s the kind of weird perspective I have now. It’s an oddly different perspective.”

“Oddly different” is a good way to describe Sparhawk’s first musical project after Parker’s death: Derecho Rhythm Section, a psychedelic funk band he started with his son, Cyrus Sparhawk, on bass. (He’s also now on tour with Alan.) Nothing like a little funk to spiritually and physically shake off sadness.

When he wasn’t out gigging with the Derecho crew, Sparhawk found himself often holed up at his big, old house in Duluth looking for ways to make music on his own. That’s when he started experimenting with drum machines, synthesizers and the TC Helicon vocal effect device that defines “White Roses, My God.”

Midwest indie-rock fans know it as the kind of echoey electronic voice manipulator used by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Poliça’s Channy Leaneagh.

“It was a device I had that the kids like to mess around with, make rap songs with or whatever, and then I started messing around with it just thinking the kids would think it’s funny,” Sparhawk recounted. “But I started liking it.

“There’s something about it that sort of locks into this melodic electronic sound. It makes you able to hear and sing in a different way. It kind of became its own instrument and became very responsive. It makes something you wouldn’t otherwise hear.”

There are subtle hints of loss and death throughout “White Roses, My God,” For example, in the simplistically beautiful standout track “Heaven,” he imagines heaven as “a lonely place if you’re alone / I wanna be there with the people that I love.”

However, Sparhawk hesitated to overstate the record as an embodiment of his mourning period.

“Those songs started really as just sort of private improvisations,” Sparhawk explained. “They were mostly just based on curiosity and an activity to just keep myself sane.”

Another diversion Sparhawk took up in that time frame was returning to the road.

He joined Trampled by Turtles on its string of dates in 2023’s Outlaw Music Festival with Willie Nelson and another rock legend who has repeatedly pledged his love for Low’s music, Robert Plant (on the tour singing with Alison Krauss). Sparhawk played guitar and sang harmonies with Trampled at those shows.

“They were doing me a favor more than I was doing one for them,” Sparhawk noted.

During that tour, the idea of them recording together — one that had come up many times over the years — became a reality. Trampled was already scheduled to record at Pachyderm Recording Studio in Cannon Falls.

“We tacked on another day to the recording schedule to do some of my songs, not really knowing what would come of it,” he said.

What came of it is one of the best albums in Sparhawk’s discography.

“With Trampled by Turtles” combines the strengths of two of Minnesota’s most cherished and distinctive bands of all time into a remarkably cohesive and spirited collection. Trampled’s well-greased six-man vocal harmonies sound very different from but almost as powerful as Parker’s beautiful contributions to Sparhawk’s tunes in Low.

Two of the new LP’s songs were also recorded for “White Roses,” “Heaven” and “Get Still,” that Sparhawk points to as proof of how unplanned the project was.

“I thought it’d be fun to do just one song from the other record, so I picked ‘Heaven,‘” he said, “but it went so well I said we should try ‘Get Still,’ too.”

Trampled’s members had heard demos of most of the tunes and/or heard Sparhawk play them live, but for the most part they improvised through the recording session, he said with a hint of pride.

“I would play a couple chords, go through it a couple times and then we’d do it, and they would do their thing. That’s how those guys work, and it’s how I like to work too.”

In a post about “With Trampled by Turtles,” Trampled frontman Dave Simonett called Sparhawk “one of our biggest heroes, influences and mentors.

“Alan has never stopped searching for the art hidden everywhere in life,” Simonett said. “He has taught us to be fearless in creating and performing, and to stay on our toes. We hope you get a chance to check out this newest collection of his songs. Recording them was as powerful an experience as we’ve had as a band.”

There’s a chance some fans — Minnesota fans, in particular — will get to hear Sparhawk perform some of the new songs live with Trampled. In the meantime, though, he’s performing some of those tracks as well as the “White Roses” songs in intimate, innovative live sets on tour with Cyrus.

Alan sang high praises of his new bandmate: “He’s really creative and has a lot of great ideas. A good player, very tasteful and very attentive to rhythm and feel. A lot of people look at their instruments more mathematically than he does, but he’s more about feel.”

Cyrus’ sister, Hollis Sparhawk, is also now a musician in a Duluth-based rock band colorfully named Willem Dafoe Fan Club. Alan said of Hollis, though, “She’s too smart to want to tour.”

Speaking of Cyrus’ willingness to hit the road, Alan said simply, “Obviously, that’s maybe been the best situation for me personally when it came to touring again.”

Like the experimental nature of his albums, he said touring without his son right now “might feel too much like something is missing.”

With: Mount Eerie.

When: 7 p.m. Thu.

Where: First Avenue, 701 1st Av. N., Mpls.

Tickets: $33, all ages, first-avenue.com.