Members of the indie folk band The National Parks cut their teeth in the Provo music scene that also spawned such groups as the Used and Imagine Dragons. So it’s no surprise that they are looking forward to playing in another Utah venue, the Ski Beach at Canyons Village, just over the Wasatch range.
“It’s honestly so great,” said Brady Parks, the band’s vocalist and guitarist. “We have such a love for Utah and for our fanbase here. It’s such a big part of who we are as a band. We are inspired by the beauty of the mountains, so being able to play there for our home base is special. And we’re excited about it.”
The National Parks will perform at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 5, as one of the Park City Institute‘s Big Stars, Bright Nights concerts, and tickets are on sale now at parkcityinstitute.org/bsbn.
The band — Parks, vocalist and keyboardist Sydney Macfarlane, drummer Cam Brannelly and violinist Megan Parks, who is Brady’s wife — is currently touring in support of its fifth album, “8th Wonder,’ which was released a few months ago.
“It was quite the project,” Brady Parks said. “We had tons of songs we wrote to choose from, and it was such a fun experience to bring those songs to life.”
The band had an idea of what the record would be as they worked on it, according to Parks.
“We wanted it to reflect our love for nature and how healing and inspiring it could be,” he said. “So the album is like a big road trip soundtrack.”
The deluxe version of “8th Wonder,” which includes three additional songs, was released last week, Parks said.
“I wrote 30-plus songs, and we narrowed it down to 11 that would be on the album,” he said. “We recorded a few extras, including these three. They felt like part of the story, but didn’t fit on the album, perfectly. So it’s been awesome to release those that are different chapters of the album.”
Life and its ups and downs inspires Parks’ songwriting.
“I’m also really inspired by nature, which makes it so great about being from Utah,” he said. “We’re surrounded by all of this natural beauty.”
Another life-changing event also inspired the band members while they were working on the album.
“Megan and I had our first baby,” Parks said. “So it was kind of this new life for us personally and new life for us as a band with all of these amazing challenges.”
Parks, who is the band’s main songwriter, will write a song and record a demo to work out production ideas.
“Once that’s done, I’ll send it to the band,” he said. “If everyone vibes on it, they think of their own parts.”
The band then will venture into the studio armed with those ideas.
“That’s where everyone puts their own touches on it.” Park said. “A song comes alive and becomes a bigger thing than what it was when I first wrote it.”
From there the song undergoes production and sequencing, which is a fancy way to say the band figures out where the song fits with others on an album, Parks said.
The real fun begins when The National Parks performs the songs on stage.
“It’s exciting to take these songs we’ve poured our hearts into and play them in a live setting,” Parks said. “It brings new life to them, because we make changes, or we play them differently and bigger. Plus, there’s the energy we feel from the crowd as they scream the lyrics at the top of their lungs.”
When that happens, Parks and his bandmates make it a point to step away from their microphones to enjoy the moment.
“We just let the crowd take over the songs, and the ones on the new album are so fun to do this live,” he said.
One of the challenges of playing live is creating a set list, especially after chalking up five studio albums, Parks said.
“It’s tough, because we can’t play every song that people want us to,” he said. “So it comes down to the songs that we feel are most impactful live, which ones are crowd favorites and what songs we enjoy playing live. There’s like a diagram where those songs all come together.”
Still, the musicians usually start off with songs they know they want to play.
“Sometimes a song won’t translate live the way we want it to, so we brainstorm ways about how to fix it,” Parks said. “Or we just replace it with a different song, and that’s fun, too.”