Parker Millsap: "The Very Last Day" 10-Year Anniversary Tour
The Vanguard
June 17, 2026
The day after yet another disappointing primary election in Oklahoma, Parker Millsap rolled through Tulsa to play a type of concert that has become truly polarizing: an album anniversary show.
At best, anniversary concerts are a way to catch live performances of deep cuts that don’t often make it onto set lists, an opportunity to hear an artist reimagine an earlier musical inclination with the benefit of growth (and hindsight). These shows have become a safe bet for generating ticket sales, even for bands who have a throwback concert or two under their belts already.
I suppose your take on this experience may correspond to how excited you feel about dragging out your high school yearbook. In a 2024 article for The New York Times called “No More Nostalgia Concerts, Please,” Peter C. Baker lamented that big-name bands such as Weezer, U2, and Green Day monetize our nostalgic attachment to the past, passing on their chance—even as they are already wildly successful—to push audiences toward spontaneity, toward new ideas in response to the current cultural moment.
But what if the current moment is itself an echo of the past? Parker Millsap’s third album, The Very Last Day, came out in 2016, a year of political turning whose grip we still haven’t escaped. Love or hate the current president, we Okies live alongside red state association with Trump, his popularity here due at least in part to his influence among evangelicals. When Millsap, a native of Purcell, Oklahoma, was first nominated for an Americana music award in 2014 for his self-titled second album, critics commented on his emotive vocal delivery, which, like Elvis Presley’s, can partly be traced to his roots in the Pentecostal church. In short: the guy gets us.
At Vanguard, another powerful vocalist opened the show: Caroline Spence, who has drawn high praise for her songwriting from the Kerrville Folk Fest and has earned the admiration of such notables as Miranda Lambert and Emmylou Harris. Spence’s voice is among the most angelic I’ve heard; achieving the breath control required for her high soprano to sound otherworldly rather than shrill is no small feat. Her best known songs “Slow Dancer” and “Mint Condition” were highlights, along with “Who’s Gonna Make My Mistakes,” which charmingly featured a sour guitar chord and a fumbled high note. (We’re all sinners, after all.)