Shakey Graves joins WXPN for an acoustic set and a look back at ‘And the War Came’

Ahead of his recent show at Union Transfer, Alejandro Rose-Garcia, who records and performs as Shakey Graves, stopped by WXPN for a conversation and acoustic set with host Mike Vasilikos. His current tour loosely marks the anniversary of And the War Came, the 2014 album that brought his music to a national audience. Though it’s billed as a ten-year celebration, Rose-Garcia admitted the timing isn’t exact. “We’re not doing a lot of math these days,” he joked. “It’s all about memories, man.”

And the War Came marked a turning point in Rose-Garcia’s sound. It was the first time he brought other musicians into the process, moving away from the lo-fi, one-man-band approach of his early work. “This was kind of the first album that I really had help on,” he said. That shift extended to the stage, too, where his shows now blend stripped-down solo moments with full-band arrangements. “We realized it was kind of whip-lashy when you watch it live,” he said. “So now we kind of mix it throughout just to make the flow of it all a little better.”

The tour has offered Rose-Garcia a chance to revisit the moment when things changed. “It is pretty bittersweet,” he said, reflecting on the time when “Dearly Departed” was getting national airplay and touring intensified. “My favorite thing about looking back at this time is sort of acknowledging how traumatic in some ways it was, and then also just being so grateful because I get to look at all the doors that opened.”