This story is featured in CityBeat’s April 19 print edition.
With his lo-fi thrum, churn and charm, Shakey Graves brings his patented suitcase kit and eclectic roots music to Bogart’s for a night of ragged singalongs. Alejandro Rose-Garcia, the Austin, Texas-based musician, debuted with his album Roll the Bones and Shakey Graves stage name back in 2011. Known for his one-man band dynamics, Shakey rigs a homemade bass drum kit out of an old suitcase and tambourine to anchor his ramshackle sound. He keeps the beat with his feet while playing guitar and singing his bluesy folk rambles — it’s a workout just watching him. Graves still performs his stripped down, funky blast of street busker schtick for part of his set, and then his band joins him for the remainder. On later records like 2018’s Can’t Wake Up, he utilizes other musicians and expands his sound.
Graves describes his music as “hobo folk,” and you can hear the tumbledown mileage in his music: the dusty roads, trains and highways that bisect his stories and songs. But it’s his charisma, loose feel and warm interaction with fans that pull the crowd in every night. This tour he focuses on Roll the Bones X, his most recent record, as a familiar touchstone; this is a special edition, two-disc re-release of his first record filled with rarities and alternate cuts.
Graves sums this up to Magnolia Record Club in 2021, “I made many strange burned cds over the years for friends, this first record is the ultimate one of those, the cream on the top of years of strange songs put on tape. . . I love its rough edges and heart.”
Shakey Graves plays Bogart’s at 8 p.m. April 25. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Info: concerts.livenation.com.
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This article appears in Apr 5-18, 2023.
