Shakey Graves – Keeping It Real (INTERVIEW)

For the music fans amongst us that love a good DIY story, look no further than the accomplishments of Alejandro Rose-Garcia. Rose Garcia, (a.k.a. Shakey Graves), who last week (10/7) released his second full length, And The War Came. This follows the artist’s 2011 self-released debut album, Roll the Bones, which brought him national acclaim and, three years later, still ranks near the top of Bandcamp’s digital best-seller charts.  The Austin, TX artist is renowned for his one-man-band performances, playing drums with his feet and bashing out rhythms on his six string.  Along with a soulful howl, Shakey’s stammer has as caught on rapidly, with his fall tour awarding sell outs in most cities.

And Then the War Came, proves Shakey can very well be a career artist with his And the Ware Came that is both diverse and creative and engagingly authentic.  There’s a more expansive sound that proves Shakey Graves can be a full on collaborative band, and not a token to a one-man band description that he’s previously been labeled as.  Prior to the release And The Ware Came, Glide had a chance to have a candid and revealing conversation about the growth, though process and extra-curricular activities of the artist best known as Shakey Graves.

I was just watching on Youtube you set when you visited KEXP, and your set there was blistering, and one of the strongest sets that I’ve seen in a while.  Do you feel like these new songs have given you a new sense of confidence?  

Yeah, I mean I don’t think it really has much to do with the songs as much as it’s the sort of real-time battle experience I’ve gotten out of this year.

Yeah, I just sensed a lot of authenticity and realness that I haven’t really seen in a lot of artists lately.  I don’t think the host (John Richards) even knew what to say, I think he was taken a little aback, too.

Well I mean I really love performing and that’s always been the case. Throughout my whole life, I’ve been in theater.  My family’s a big theater family, and you know, I’ve been encouraged to perform and to have that fine line of being really present when you’re performing and also letting yourself run away, and not be too self-conscious because you can’t assume people are perceiving it in any way.  I thought I was just kinda drowning on the radio during that whole thing.  I thought, “This is fucked up.  This is super-edited, it’s 9 in the morning, and you can’t tell how things are going through a set of headphones, and besides that, the show that I just played in the Tractor Tavern in Seattle was arguably the best show that I’ve ever had in my whole life.  It was something else, and I think a lot of that came on the heels of me playing at the Newport Folk Festival, and Pickathon is one of my favorite festivals in the world and Newport is important in the states for sure, and the amount of pressure and happy anxiety that I felt around those, and accomplishing that and really, the moment I stepped on stage, feeling like, “Oh yeah, I’m supposed to be here!  They invited me here because I play the guitar! For people!”

Did you get any sort of nod of approval from your contemporaries that you always thought at the beginning were leagues ahead of you, but now you feel like they’re your equals that kind of gave you a sense of belonging?

Yeah, well I mean the way that both those festivals are, they’re kinda, there’s a lot of that.  There’s a lot of artist mingling, and the Shovels and Rope folks were there the whole time. I really think they’re definitely one of the more influential bands in my recent days, and to just have that weird experience of loving the music so much and loving the band even more, and every time I see them I feel like I enjoy them more, which doesn’t really happen all the time; even with friends’ bands, you’ll watch them grow and get better, and you’re always happy to see them. But this is like every time I see them play, I love their music a little more, and every time I get to talk  about their lives and just stuff in general, I’m like, “Are you kidding me?  This is just super..”

And having them around to go give them a hug and be like “Am I allowed to come back here?”  They’re like, “What are you talking about?  Come here!”  And bands like Lucius, I think they’re one of the best working bands in the states, and they’re only gonna get better, and they’re also just top-notch people, and across the board, getting to hang out with Sean, Langhorne Slim, him and I have developed a pretty good friendship over the course of this year, and I got to be onstage with Mavis Staples. And just, you know, just as a music fan personally, the whole experience was so overwhelming and absolutely inspiring, that I feel like once I got to get back on stage and feel like people were there to pay attention to just my music, I was like, “Oh Fuck! Oh Fuck!  I got to sound check for an hour as opposed to fifteen minutes!  Check this out!  I have four guitars on stage and I’m gonna play every single one of them because I know how to play a guitar, kindof!”

Yeah, it must be real, I mean those are big stages but do you think about the bigger stages ahead, the Bonnaroos? Those are gonna be even bigger, and other people outside your genre that you might be playing alongside.  I mean it might be Neil Young next time.

Yeah, certainly.  I mean I can’t think about that too much, but this year I got to do Sasquatch and that was an amazing experience, and that crowd was maybe 4,000 people or something, I mean it was huge.

Yeah, you have a large number of shows on your fall tour that are sold out.  Why do you think people are catching on all of the sudden?

I mean to me, it feels really organic.  I mean I’ve been here the whole time so I’ve gotten to watch it grow really naturally.  I think timing is everything.  You know, I didn’t start going on tour until I had something to take on tour, and when I did, I would get to open for some great bands that already had built-in fanbase that make for an easy crossover.

So to start with, I really had a sweet fanbase through Youtube and doing some great sessions, and just having an internet presence in general, and especially since a lot of these people have been waiting to see a Shakey Graves come to their town for a couple years.  They’ve been in since the beginning, and then getting to hit all the spots with all the bands I mentioned, it was like  1200 people a night in a city, and even if I walk out with a hundred of those people kindof enjoying it, that achieved something.

And The War Came is your debut full-length, right?

Yeah, I mean it’s my sophomore album but this is the first one I’ve ever done on a multi-platform, full release.

What are your expectations with it?  When you listen back and hear it, is it a fully-realized sound of Shakey Graves that you wanted it to be?  Does it come up short or does it overdo itself at any points?

No, I mean it’s pretty much exactly what I made it, and again, I’ve always taken that mindset into everything I do, I think it’s always an option to nitpick your own stuff to death, to just constantly redo this and overdo that, and at certain points, you just need to step back..  I think so.  You don’t know who you’re playing to or what it’s supposed to be all the time, you know like I didn’t get to where I am now by knowing everything.  Not in the least. And what the new album has is a lot of variety, a lot of new stuff that I don’t think people have heard me do, that I personally know that I do, approaches to songs and stuff.

You did some collaborating on this record with Esme (Patterson) and even on the KEXP segment you had a separate drummer.  What did you learn about yourself in terms of collaborating and expanding?  I imagine you’re pretty much always going through an education process, right?

Oh, very much so.  And that’s how I see all of this, and the story of this album really has been this year of me reminding myself that I never set out to be this. It’s been great, but on one level, I started working with management and got a really great team together this year, and they’re wonderful, but to a certain degree, I was new to them. You know, the one-man band show that’s got very little overhead, and it’s their job to trust me and to also challenge me with “we’ve been to this market once, and you came as a one-man band- “that’s what people want to see” and I’m like, “I wanna bring a drummer.”  This is changing and I’ve got to allow it to change, otherwise I’m gonna be dead in the water in another five years, when I try and make a non-one-man band album and people are like, “Bullshit.”  And I didn’t ever get into this to do it entirely alone.  That was a means to an end.  I couldn’t find anybody that I had time to work with, it was all a “turning lemons into lemonade” deal, and now I do and I did, and I really started to find people that I enjoyed collaborating with, and it was time.

Don’t take this the wrong way, but a lot of people have labeled your music as “old-timey” and maybe “sideshowish” because you were the one-man band.

Yeah! (laughs) Which is fine, but now that you’re beyond that, it’s a lot easier to play bigger stages and be heard by other people that normally wouldn’t hear you. They like more of a full rock band sound.

I can see fans of Jack White and even the Black Keys, people that really like scratchy, soulful music becoming Shakey Graves fans.  People that really like authentic roots music or Americana.  I think you could fit right in there with any of that.

The best-case scenario is that they really like what they see and they end up backtracking.  My music covers a lot of different things and it wears a lot of influences on its sleeve and I never wanted to peg myself in.  I’ve had people in the past get mad, like, “Fuck man, the Shakey Graves I knew was like some hobo dude who played in a drainage ditch.” and I’m like, “I know what video you’re talking about, but that means you watched it on a computer at some point, and I was wearing suspenders and a tie playing in a drainage ditch.  Come on, dude, are you serious?   If I was some hobo mountain man, this would not be happening.”  I never claimed that and I do have a lot of wildness in me and I’ve got tons of dirt on me, but that’s just as fake as anything, like putting on KISS makeup.  It still rules, but whatever.

They’re obviously looking way too much into it, but your music really has progressed into that other realm that I was talking about, and it also serves into your guitar playing that’s very boisterous.  There’s a lot more sound in your guitar than there is in other guitarists’ playing.  When did you first find your style on guitar?  Do you feel yourself just kinda channeling it now?  Does it just come naturally?

You know, it’s a little bit of both and some part of me would love to be like, “yeah, I don’t know where it comes from” but I sorta don’t and at the same time, I’m lucky enough to be at the point that I play guitar every day now, and I started to develop a style maybe around 2007.  It was me trying to emulate people like Elliott Smith and John Lee Hooker and Townes Van Zandt and stuff, but it would never come out right.  I’m self-taught and that has a lot of downfall in my confidence in playing with other musicians and all that stuff, and it also leaves a lot of wonder to be found in the guitar.  I would find something and be like, “I found this magical chord!” and then someone would be like, “dude, that’s G minor.” I’d be like, “oh, no shit..  Weird.”  It’s cool, though.  Yeah, I mean over the last year, my guitar playing has entirely redesigned itself.  I’ve actually started maturing, playing for hours on end and giving myself permission to go for it and fuck up all I want.

What was your reaction when you first played guitar on these larger stages in these bigger rooms and hearing that instrument that you’re so used to playing in a smaller venue echo throughout?

You know, it was a nightmare sometimes.  Gear is extremely important.  It’s not something to feel vain about acquiring or redefining because if you don’t sound right, you’re gonna go insane the whole time.  I’ve gone through a lot of phases.   I started with an acoustic guitar and then I played into a thing, and then I went through this, and then I went to that, and then I learned I needed this.  I’m still redefining all that, but I finally found my setup that without it, I can do other stuff, but with my setup, I have a lot of control.

Do you see yourself ever wanting to do a full band at some point?  Having a bass player behind you?

Yeah, I mean it’ll be the same thing as playing those sessions with Chris.  Certain songs need more people and it’s a case-by-case basis.  And a show is always more interesting the more people you throw in there sometimes.  I want to have a tour at some point where I take the songs out all as a bluegrass version or a bad disco show or a metal version, who knows? They’re all up for redefinition at any point.

In the early part of your career, you didn’t involve money at all in any fashion.  You almost gave your music away, just to spread the word.  Obviously, it’s hard to be an artist like a Fugazi, or someone who’s totally against money in any form and just does things DIY.  Do you feel like that concept’s changed for you now?  Do you feel yourself struggling to keep a balance of keeping it real and also seeing Shakey Graves as a business?

No, I mean Shakey Graves has always been a business as much as anything.  I think it’s wise that if you sell your art in any way, you should always treat it as such, and that was a business model as much as anything.  There’s a level of when you listen to music, there are certain artist that you do want to support.  It doesn’t bother you at all to drop ten, fifteen, thirty dollars.  You’re just like, “I want to give you my money.” Aand I’ve got plenty of people that, and what I wanted is a place that I knew people wanted to.  But yeah, it was that and I put that album out in 2011 and I really like the Bandcamp model of that.  I think that’s a great option and I also really, really believed in my product.  It wasn’t that I was trying to sell it, it was like I’d rather people have it than not have it.  I’d rather people have it and realize that they have something nice on their hands and then deal with it that way.

How involved are you on the merchandise side?  Do you design your t-shirts?

Yeah, I mean I try and do it all, and it’s becoming a lot harder to, which is now so wonderful, and I feel so grateful that I’ve been needing people that I trust to do that stuff for me now.  Because creative control is crucial.

You said Townes Van Zandt’s obviously your biggest influence.  He’s someone that a lot of people don’t name as one of their biggest influences, but is as influential as almost any singer-songwriter.  Can you tell me how you were first turned on to him and what triggered your listening relationship to him?

Yeah, I found um,  (laughs) I had this experience when I was 18 or 19.  I was given some mushrooms by a friend of mine.  I was living in LA at the time, and I ended up eating them and sitting in front of my computer and playing music for the first time in that state of mind.  And I had this really bizarre experience where it felt sort of like a channeled bit, where I pressed record and all of the sudden I would just open my mouth and I was singing in a totally different way that didn’t sound like me, it was higher than my voice, and I just kinda threw up like eight songs in a row.  They all came out totally written, and I still play a few of them today; I’ve refurbished them a little bit, but it was like this crazy experience of songs just flying and I’m like, “Oh my God, what’s happening to me?  I’m a witch!” and I sent them to my friend.

My friend Kami’s always listened to my recorded music, and she’s like, “Whoa, what the fuck?  Ale, it sounds a little like Townes Van Zandt.”  I was like, “Who’s Townes Van Zandt?”  and so that was when I was like, “Alright, well what is she talking about?” and this was right when “Be Here to Love Me” had come out, and it was the night before I moved out to Los Angeles to kinda chase the dragon.  And that documentary is such a genuinely wonderful music documentary because it doesn’t over glorify him.  It’s very human.  It talks a lot about his rough spots because he had a lot.  And it also shows you why you should pay attention to him and it played a lot of his songs for me for the first time.  The first time that I heard “Rake” I instantaneously started crying.  You know, it had a lot to do with my life; I was moving and..  But it’s like I knew the song before it started, and the same has gone with a lot of his songs.  The moment they start, I’m like, “You motherfucker! Aww! You get it!  You beat us to it.  You won the race and wrote the song first.  You fucker!  Awesome..”

Maybe you guys are related in some distant form you don’t even know about.

(laughs) Yeah, you know, we’re tuned to the same radio station maybe internally somehow.

So no more mushroom experiences after that?   It sounds like it was pretty prolific in terms of writing..

(laughs) well that’s a different story..

I’ve always wondered why a lot of artists say, “I’ve had the most prolific writing experience ever when I was on acid or shrooms that one night.”  It seems after those experiences you’d have a whole encyclopedia of awesome music

Yeah, well I do..  I check into that world when I can.  You gotta keep one foot on the breathing side, though.  You go dark all the time, you’re gonna have a bad time.  I’ve always played with that a lot.  I have a lot of personal beliefs about where music comes from and human’s relationship with all that sort of stuff.  And drugs vs. not drugs and psychedelics vs. drugs and consciousness.

Do you feel Austin has been nurturing to you?  Or do you feel that Texas has been restricting?

No, I mean Texas is my home and it always will be.  It’s my home in a lot more ways than just the place that I sleep.  Getting to live in Texas, which is such a generalized place, also living in Austin, which is very generalized, too, and some people say “Austin isn’t Texas” and I used to subscribe to that a little bit, but the older I grow, you know, it’s like saying that someone from New Jersey isn’t human (laughs).  It’s wonderful to be a Texan and it’s really influential and I see a lot of bad stuff about it.  I see a lot of beauty, I see a lot of history..  and it’s a struggle down here, it’s a pain in the as – Texas is crazy.  And it’s also really deadly, really pretty and really hot, and it’s just so fucking big, and the inner ideals of like the cowboy, and that sort of pure living is always very present out here, even in the most drastic city circumstance.

It seems very present in your music, too.  It has a very southern feel to it in terms of going against the grain, rustic, rural. I would definitely not say you’re from Boston or Seattle.  It has that vibe to it, which is a good thing.  People are looking for something a little more real and a lot of people in Texas are real.

Yeah, and at the same time, I wrote a lot of those songs when I was living in Los Angeles and New York, and if you listen to it, I doubt you would think, “Oh yeah, he’s from Lubbock.” I’m only as extended as I am.  I’m still part of the whole picture, but I feel like I can live in both those worlds at the same time.  I can be the city boy that I make fun of and I can also be the country boy that will get dip on you.

So on a final note about Austin, who are some of your bands that you want to shout out to that deserve to be heard nationally but are still slugging it out in the smaller spots there?

Well, there’s the family bands.  There’s my homies Wild Child and they do great, great work.  The band called Not in the Face, out of here that’s out on tour with X right now, but they kill it.  There’s kind of an unsung band called Berkshire Hounds that whips royal ass, and they’re younger than I am but it really helps that they..  I hope that they just get to play to more people because they fucking rule.  And it’s this kind of gospel rock and roll, a genuine rock and roll revival thing that is just astounding to watch because it’s really cool.