Over the past six months, Grayson Capps has returned from a European tour, released his latest studio album, Scarlett Roses, and is in the midst of touring the US. In July, he’ll perform throughout the state of Colorado, including stops in Denver, Pueblo, Bond, Steamboat Springs, Yampa, Meeker, Fort Collins and Manitou Springs.
Scarlett Roses, released via Royal Potato Family, is the acclaimed Alabama-based singer/songwriter’s sixth studio recording and his first new solo album in six years. Throughout the collection, Capps showcases the kind of understated brilliance that can blossom when creativity is detached from expectation, when songs are truly given the space and time to find their writer.
Watch “Scarlett Roses” (Official Video)
“A lot of these songs came to me the way dreams do, where all these different bits and pieces from all these different parts of life come together,” Capps explains. “I would pick up the guitar and things would come to me naturally because I wasn’t actually trying to make a record.”
Capps wrote the album slowly and steadily after moving back to his home state with his partner, the Grammy Award-winning engineer/producer Trina Shoemaker. Recorded over the course of two whirlwind sessions and abetted by his longtime guitarist Corky Hughes, songs like “Taos,” “Bag Of Weed” and “Thankful” don’t shy away from tackling the heavy burdens of growing older: separation from loved ones, the weight of fatherhood, the mortality of our parents, self-medication. As serious as it may sound, Capps manages to write with an eye towards beauty and humor, extracting hard-won catharsis and even genuine joy from pain and loss.
“The songs on Scarlett Roses really chronicle me discovering my position in the world,” says Capps. “It was a process that felt like gaining something and losing something at the same time.”
Hailed by NPR’s Mountain Stage for his “unbridled energy and authenticity,” Capps first emerged as a solo artist in 2005 following stints in the New Orleans thrash folk band the House Levelers, which he joined while still a student studying theater at Tulane, and his subsequent blues-rock group, Stavin’ Chain. His proper debut release under his own name, ‘If You Knew My Mind,’ earned rave reviews, with the New Orleans Times Picayune writing that “his character-based narratives are guaranteed to make you ache and exult,” and Exclaim! calling it “a Southern gothic tour de force.”
Around this same time a handful of Capps songs would appear in the film, ‘A Love Song For Bobby Long,’ starring Scarlett Johansson and John Travolta. Soon thereafter, Hurricane Katrina forced Capps to relocate to Franklin, TN where he went on to release a string of similarly exalted albums that earned him devoted followings in both the US and Europe. JamBase said his music “hums with quiet wisdom and unforced momentum,” while All Music said it was “filled with the bloody glory and taut acceptance of real life on the bottom,” and American Songwriter declared, “Take the poetry of Texas troubadour Townes Van Zandt, combine with Steve Earle‘s edgy attitude and stir with a little cup of the bayou-blues (think Howlin’ Wolf) and you start to get a taste of Capps’ scrumptious gothic gumbo.”
Colorado Tour
July 12 – Denver, CO – Levitt Pavillion *
July 13 – Pueblo, CO – Brues Ale House Brewing Co.
July 14 – Bond, CO – Rancho Del Rio Saturday Night Social
July 15 – Steamboat Springs, CO – Slopeside Grill
July 18 – Meeker, CO – Trapper’s Lake Lodge & Resort
July 20 – Fort Collins, CO – Avogadro’s Number **
July 21 – Bond, CO – Rancho Del Rio Saturday Night Social
July 22 – Steamboat Springs, CO – Slopeside Grill
July 27 – Denver, CO – The Walnut Room
July 28 – Bond, CO – Rancho Del Rio Saturday Night Social
July 29 – Manitou Springs, CO – Stagecoach Inn ***
* w/ Larkin Poe
** w/ Cary Morin
*** w/ Joe Johnson
Go Grayson! Represent the music!