In the early days of their marriage, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker’s dream was simple. “We wanted to do something in life together – be in business together, or work together … Just be together,” Sparhawk told me in 2013. The solution materialised in 1993 when they formed Low, in which Parker sang and drummed until her death on Saturday of ovarian cancer.
They’d known each other since elementary school, growing up together in Clearbrook, a tiny city in rural Minnesota. Parker’s mother had been an aspiring country singer whose career had gone no further than a handful of shows in Minneapolis, but still loved singing old gospel songs with her daughters, occasionally performing at church or at funerals. After they began dating in their teens, Sparhawk would hang out at the Parker house, and jam with Mimi’s mother. It was there that Sparhawk and his future wife/bandmate first harmonised, singing Neil Young’s Heart of Gold together.
