From singer-songwriter to pop-punk rocker: Tomboy lead singer Erin Parkes takes stage solo at Zephyr Folk Festival

Whether rocking with local band Tomboy or simply equipped with the timeless honesty of an acoustic guitar, Erin Parkes finds creative outlets through multiple mediums.

Parkes discovered her love of music through a single acoustic guitar that nobody in her childhood home actually knew how to play. Her mom and dad kept the six-string around in the living room corner, taking up space, taunting Parkes for years. Finally, at age 11, she picked up the instrument and took it upon herself to learn.

“I just had a very strong draw to it,” Parkes said. “I just learned a couple of my favorite songs overnight and showed it to my mom, and she said, ‘Oh, you actually want to do this thing.’ ”

Parkes went from learning those initial songs, such as Green Day’s “Good Riddance” or Taylor Swift classics like “Mean” and “Sparks Fly,” to writing her own music by 14. She was often the youngest in the room during open mic events at Luxe Coffee House (now First Avenue Coffee), but Parkes found a sense of community there, the very same that pushed her to write and perform her own music.

“They strongly encouraged me to write a song, so I did,” Parkes said. “Right off the bat, it was just super natural and easy to write and things just came naturally, so I wrote lots of songs.”

Parkes continued to perform as a solo singer-songwriter, but the thought of being in a band lingered in the back of her mind. She brought up the idea of a band to her friend and fellow musician, bassist Nickolaus Harner, while he was working at the now-closed Gordy’s Sichuan Cafe.

“One day I came in and I was like, ‘Man, you know, I would just love to be in a band,’ ” Parkes said. “I just have never had a band, I’ve always wanted to be in a band.”

As it turns out, Harner knew a few musicians who had just gotten out of a band and were looking for their next venture: guitarist Giovani Covarrubias and drummer Austin Davis. He introduced them to Parkes and a few loose practice sessions followed, leading to the formation of Tomboy.

“I always thought that, ‘Oh, I’m going to meet these people and it’s never really going to actually happen,’ because that’s kind of how things go,” Parkes said. “And then I heard one of them say in the practice room, ‘I can’t wait until we play that song on stage,’ and I was in shock, like no way we’re actually going to go out and play songs. I thought we’d do this a couple times and never see each other again.”

Now, as the band nears their two-year anniversary in September, Tomboy can say they’ve played a slew of shows across Spokane and have four released songs under their belt. The indie pop-punk group also recently opened for legends of the genre, the All-American Rejects, before their local house performance – part of the band’s pop-up tour in backyards, garages and other alternative venues across the country.

“That has been unreal, and we are still kind of floating on the wave of it,” Parkes said. “The height of it is intense. It’s been very cool, but it was just a shock more than anything.”

Since the performance, Tomboy has been thrown into the deep end of the public eye, receiving an array of deals, but at the end of the day Parkes and the rest of the band have kept the same goal. They simply want to perform and, if possible, make Tomboy a full-time gig.

Among this new rush of attention, Parkes will be going back to her singer-songwriter roots by performing solo at the second edition of the Zephyr Folk Festival in Liberty Lake this weekend. Fueled by a range of inspirations, from life experience and grief to love and heartbreak, Parkes will perform music she wrote for herself that wound up becoming almost entirely different Tomboy songs.

“I’ve always kind of considered myself a folk artist first,” Parkes said. “They won’t have the same sound or structure as Tomboy makes it … they will be different, they’ll sound different, they’ll play different.”