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.)
When Millsap took the stage, he asked how many in the audience had come from a religious background similar to his and were now going through their own reckoning with a life spent in rapture prep. Clocking the knowing responses, Millsap added, “Yeah, I’m almost over it.”
Millsap’s rendition of The Very Last Day was noticeably more loping than the recorded version. Each song was less bright, more haggard, with a delivery I dare to describe as … dirty? The album’s apocalyptic theme, though conceived a decade ago, remains as relevant as ever. Millsap wrote the song “Heaven Sent” about a gay son’s plea for understanding from his preacher father, out of solidarity with queer friends who weren’t treated fairly, and this night’s performance was as impassioned as ever. “Morning Blues,” which I’ve always enjoyed as a call to greet the day with energy, was in this iteration more like a pleading for hope from a speaker who just can’t bear to face the day after all.
After making it through the album’s track list, Millsap ended with songs from succeeding records along with a couple of early gems, including “Palisade,” which he wrote at just 19 years old, and “Disappear,” with Samantha Crain joining for a treat of a duet. “The Real Thing,” in its lament, “Can’t hold your hand through a screen,” is my favorite of Millsap’s newer songs. Though it was written before the onset of the pandemic, it perfectly captures our need for connection that feels ever more urgent amid the doom of online living. Call me nostalgic, but I’ll never find texting to be as sexy as holding hands either.
This anniversary show felt less like escaping to the safety of popular hits and more like finding a box of treasured handwritten letters. Whether or not the addressee is still in the picture, in a reread, the feelings are still at the ready. Millsap’s return to this earlier album in this moment conveyed the feelings of longing, seeking, and tenderness that remain for believers, even if, religiosity having faded, the feelings themselves are the endpoint of conviction.
Maybe that’s why Millsap, though he left for Nashville over a decade ago, still seems so comfortable in Tulsa. We’re especially attuned to chaos here, still throwing our hands up.
