Storied guitar passed down by Minnesota folk hero Spider John Koerner to Charlie Parr

After carrying the torch for Minneapolis' West Bank folk/acoustic-blues scene for the past two decades, Charlie Parr is also now carrying one of the guitars that shaped that scene.

Minnesota's star picker of the modern era was gifted an old Gretsch 12-string acoustic guitar by one of the Minneapolis legends who most influenced him (and Bob Dylan, too), Spider John Koerner. The exchange last week at Palmer's Bar turned into a popular post on social media, with Parr noting, "I don't have the vocabulary to tell you what that means to me."

"Over the years the biggest and still most important lesson I took away from watching John play and listening to his records was that I could find my own voice on the guitar, and play those old songs in my own way, and that's been worth everything to me," Parr, 53, wrote in the grateful post.

As for the guitar, he said Koerner "wants that guitar to get played at shows, and recorded in the studio, and I am honored to be its steward and overprotective guardian.

"I'm looking forward to making a couple videos about the guitar and John, so you can hear for yourself the story of its transformation from six-string to 12, how the word 'Gretsch' is misspelled, its theft and recovery, and anything else Spider John wants to tell us."

Best known from the influential group Koerner, Ray & Glover — which recorded for Elektra Records and played the Newport Folk Festival in the mid-'60s — Koerner played his last local gig at the Palmer's Palmfest in 2018. He made it clear then he was retiring at age 79, in large part because playing guitar had become difficult.

"My hands won't always do what they used to," said Koerner, who's still a regular at Palmer's (sans guitar). "Sometimes I say my muscle memory has Alzheimer's."

Parr has spent much of the year on the road touring behind his double-album "Last of the Better Days Ahead," issued last year by the Smithsonian Folkways label. This week, he's promoting the release of a book of the same name, newly published by Southwestern Wisconsin-based Ramshackle Press. Promo for the book describes it as "tales of childhood, families, cantankerous uncles and aunts, and slightly lost individuals." It's not a memoir, Parr noted, but the stories in it are "very much real."

The Electric Fetus is hosting a free book-signing event with Parr on Tuesday at 5 p.m. His next scheduled musical appearance in town is an opening gig with Trampled by Turtles at the Armory on Nov. 26. Can't wait to hear that old, big Gretsch booming though that old, big hall.