“This cat bailed us out big time,” WXPN’s Dan Reed told the Marina Stage crowd. “He just flew in from Albany and boy are his arms tired.”
Reed was referring to rootsy Austin singer-songwriter Alejandro Rose-Garcia, known better to you as Shakey Graves, who filled in at virtually the last minute on today’s XPNFest Marina Stage schedule. But let’s look at the full story: Thursday we received word that the previously-booked Greensky Bluegrass could not make it to the festival for health reasons, but the following morning we were able to lock in Shakey for the slot. (As he tells it, he was playing at a New England festival when he found out.)
And then, today: Rose-Garcia was in Albany, trying to catch a flight to Philly, when “a rogue helicopter landed on the tarmac and they couldn’t get it started” to get out of the way of his departing plane. Minutes counted down, nervous Instagram stories were posted, “But here we are, against all odds. Even amidst all this stuff I feel really lucky that I get to travel around to different places on this random endeavor.”
“This random endeavor” being not only a great potential title for a future song, but a nod to Shakey Graves’ career in music, which started as one-person shows in the southwest and expanded to the full-band configuration of the project that frequently plays venues like The Met Philly and First Avenue in Minneapolis. Solo was what we got for XPNFest, and it was divine, opening on 2017’s “Nobody’s Fool,” the thump of his suitcase kickdrum reverberating on the lawn.
Shakey Graves | photo by Megan Matuzak for WXPN
Over the course of an hour-long set, Rose-Garcia got the crowd to sing along to the “da da da”‘s on “Built To Roam,” played them “a waltz full of bad information” (that’s “Word Of Mouth”), worked a cover of the Pixies classic “Where Is My Mind” into the outro of “Unlucky Skin,” and had a plastic cup of cocktail shrimp on ice delivered onstage by Marina Stage manager (and World Cafe talent coordinator) Chelsea Johnson. “These are confusing times we live in,” he said, “There’s really wild stuff happening all the time. Imagine what it’s like for a shrimp. Very, very strange.”
Shakey Graves was funny, poignant, moving, and most notably, engaging, whether it was the meditative tones of the older cut “Tomorrow” — one he said he wrote as a youth that has shifted meanings as an adult — or the bluesy licks of “Roll The Bones,” or the closing murder ballad “Late July.”
“This is actually how I started in music,” Rose-Garcia said. “I don’t always get to do solo shows so this is a fun chance to get to go back in time.”
Check out more photos from Shakey Graves’ XPNFest set below and look for more coverage as the weekend contunes!