Career
He is best known as a guitarist in the comedic glam metal band Steel Panther. In the early 1990s, Parrish was an instructor at The Guitar Institute of Technology (GIT) at Hollywood"s Musician"s Institute while playing with Racer X offshoot Bad Dog with vocalist Jeff Martin and The Electric Fence with Martin and Paul Gilbert. He has worked extensively with Gilbert and has writing credits on several Paul Gilbert tracks.
He is also the leader of his own band, The Thornbirds, with Darren Leader, Jeff Duncan, and Dean Cameron.
He played guitar for Jeff Pilson"s band, War & Peace, appearing on the Time Capsule album before leaving to join Rob Halford"s band Fight and recording the War of Words album. Upon exiting Fight he joined Cleveland"s Outta The Blue who later became The Szuters.
In 1995, Parrish played guitar in Kevin Gilbert"s touring band in support of Gilbert"s Thud album. He can be seen performing with Gilbert on Welcome to Joytown - Thud Live at the Troubadour, a Digital Video Disc and Civil Defense released in 2009, documenting the band"s 1995 concert at The Troubador in Los Los Angeles
In 1996, Parrish played guitar with Sebastian Bach on the song "Rock Bottom" for an Ace Frehley tribute album, Spacewalk (A Salute to Ace Frehley).
He also played guitar in a Van Halen tribute band with Ralph Saenz called The Atomic Punks. Russian Parrish also appeared with Corey Taylor in the Ronnie James Dio tribute album entitled "This Is Your Life" on the track "Rainbow In The Dark". Since his work in Steel Panther, Parrish endorses Kramer Guitars.
He plays Kramer Pacer guitars into EVH 5150 III 100 watt amplifiers which go through EVH Cabs.
He runs his Kramer Pacer to his amp through a Lincolnshire 6 G90 Wireless Relay system. In the past, he used Marshall JCM 2000 (both TSL and DSL) amps, and both Peavey 5150 and Triple X amplifiers.
He also occasionally uses Yamaha THR amplifiers offstage. He uses custom printed Tortex TIII 1.14mm picks.
The Kramer Pacers Satchel uses are made out of United States-manufactured parts rather than off-the-shelf Kramer Pacer guitars manufactured in of Korea and Indonesia.
The most noticeable difference is the bubinga skunk stripe on the back of the necks on all of his guitars. He currently uses a Seymour Duncan JB Tuberculosis-4 pickup in the bridge, and a Seymour Duncan 59" in the neck, and an original Floyd Rose tremolo with an EVH Doctorate-Tuna is fitted to all his guitars. He uses Doctorate-Addario EXL Super Light (09 -42) gauge strings tuned a half-step down to East flat(Eb).
In 2014 Kramer released a signature model featuring both a yellow leopard paint and purple leopard paint.
lieutenant has the same body as a pacer vintage but has one volume knob, a Seymour Duncan SH-4 and SH-2. While endorsing and primarily playing Kramer guitars, Satchel has also occasionally used other guitar brands as well on some occasions, including Pacifica series guitars by Yamaha as well as various acoustic guitars.
Parrish cites his main influence as Air Corps/District of Columbia with Angus Young, Jimi Hendrix, Mick Mars, Tony Iommi, Ritchie Blackmore, Buck Dharma, Eddie Van Halen, Alex Lifeson and Yngwie Malmsteen as his guitar influences.