Shakey Graves, also known as Alejandro Rose-Garcia, is a musician from Austin, Texas. This 35-year-old artist has a unique sound and offers a different vibe to Texan music. He’s influenced by various genres like rock, blues, country, and even folk. Through his music, one can tell that he experiments with intertwining all these sounds into his songs. What intrigued people most of all about him was his one-man band setup. Typically people have other musicians, but for Shakey Graves, it’s a suitcase converted into a kick drum with a tambourine stand.
Upbringing and Debut
Rose-Garcia’s family always encouraged his creative endeavors. His mother was an actress, director, and writer. His father also managed a theater. Since his family was interested in acting, it’s no surprise that Rose-Garcia pursued an acting career. Starting in his high school’s drama club and then moving to Los Angeles to be a part of movies like Spy Kids 3: Game Over.
Before Rose-Garcia gained popularity through his music, he would record and play songs in his spare time. In 2007 he attended the Old Settler’s Music Festival in Driftwood, Texas, with his friends when a random drunk man approached them. They had talked with the man for about 20 minutes when he rambled something along the lines of “spooky wagon,” and Shakey thought it sounded like some guitarist’s stage name. This ended up starting a conversation about what the rest of their stage names would be and a friend said “Shakey Graves”. Ever since then, he’s been using it to perform.
In the same year, he followed suit by pursuing music full-time and took inspiration from another older artist named Bob Log 3. This is where Rose-Garcia had the idea to perform as a one-man band just like Bob. He enjoyed how Bob constantly grabbed the attention of listeners by changing up the tempo and key throughout his songs.
Not long after, he gained tons of recognition for his 2011 album Roll the Bones. This album was so popular that the Mayor of Austin declared February 9th “Shakey Graves Day” in 2012. Currently, his newest album, which came out this year on February 9th, is titled Deadstock – A Shakey Graves Day Anthology. Anthology means previously unreleased songs or pieces of work.
Performances
Bob Log 3 has an interesting sound, but if you listen to Shakey Graves’s performance in the video below you can see quite a similarity in the both of them. From their raspy voices to even the way they slide their guitars to achieve a crunchy sound. The one main difference between them is their outfit choices whereas Bob is futuristic and Shakey is more country-looking.
This video is great to watch because it showcases his talent and passion for music. Being able to sing while playing the guitar, drums, and tambourine all at the same time is amazing. With 34 million views, this video also helped boost his recognition.
His song Dearly Departed is done as a duet with Esme Patterson, an artist from Denver, Colorado. I shared this because it was done so well and you can see a little bit more of Garcia’s personality.
My Top Songs:
The song “Kids These Days” is off of his album Can’t Wake Up. I knew about Shakey Graves when this album came out in 2018. Just like the visuals for the album cover this project is very much spooky and eerie sounding. This is my favorite song off the album!
In an interview with Redbull, Shakey Graves explained that Can’t Wake Up was a different sound than previously recorded albums. Can’t Wake Up was based on his interest in psychedelic 60s music and late 2000s indie rock. In an interview with Thrasher magazine, he explained that he recorded the album at Levon Helm’s house in Woodstock, New York. Levon Helms was an artist who achieved fame as a drummer and was 1 of 3 lead vocalists for a group called The Band. Unfortunately, he died of lung cancer at the age of 71. But for Shakey, he met Levon’s daughter at a music festival and she approached him with the question of recording his album at her father’s barn. The barn wasn’t being used and his daughter thought her father would love it.
It’s got a big fireplace, like one you can walk into, a medieval fireplace. We’d light a fire and smoke way too much weed and eat some edibles and get truly terrified and then make music. That was like our first swipe at making stuff
Alejandro Rose-Garcia (Thrasher Magazine)
“Excuses” is another top favorite for me because the song includes the layering of his vocals and a powerful thick sounding guitar. The drums and piano for this song also complement so well with the overall vibe of the night and feeling spooky.
“A World So Full of Love” is a single he released in 2019 and is his take on Roger Miller’s original song. Roger Miller is another famous artist from Fort Worth, Texas. Mostly known for his Honky-Tonk influence.
Resources:
“Interview with Shakey Graves.” Red Bull Gives You Wings – Redbull.com, 2018, https://www.redbull.com/au-en/videos/interview-with-shakey-graves-austin-city-limits-music-festival-2018.
Kevin Curtin, Fri. “Playback: Shakey Graves’ Active Dream Life.” “I Figured It Was Important to Rebreak the Mold Sooner than Later” – Music – The Austin Chronicle, 4 May 2018, https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2018-05-04/playback-shakey-graves-active-dream-life/.
Pickles , Drew. “Shakey Graves Interview.” Shakey Graves Interview, https://www.thrashermagazine.com/articles/music-interviews/shakey-graves-interview/.
“Shakey Graves Biography, Songs, & Albums.” AllMusic, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/shakey-graves-mn0002655974/biography.
“Shakey Graves.” Shakey Graves, https://www.shakeygraves.com/.
