Grayson Capps

A literate and impassioned songwriter whose characters are often caught barely hanging on to the edges of American life, Grayson Capps is a bit like a New Orleans version of Tom Waits, albeit more of a roots rocker and bluesman in actual musical execution. While the music industry places him under the Americana umbrella, Capps has proven his aesthetic to be much deeper and wider than that classification would allow. From his days in the rootsy folk thrash of the House Levelers and blues trashers Stavin Chain while still in college to emerging as a gravel-voiced Southern Coast singer songwriter on 2005's If You Knew My Mind, Capps was always a deep, accomplished musician who knew his music history inside-out and had the poetic songwriting chops to work from that knowledge. Returning to his native Alabama after Hurricane Katrina, he issued an astonishing variety of recordings including 2008's Rott & Roll, before assembling Willie Sugarcapps with Will Kimbrough, Anthony Crawford, and Savana Lee Crawford, with spouse, engineer, and producer Trina Shoemaker. Their self-titled 2013 offering was a porch-recorded, raw, wily, rootsy collection of songs, saturated in the salt and soil of the Gulf Coast region. In 2017, Capps released his most intimate collection, Scarlett Roses.