Shakey Graves says there are three types of songs: ones he sits down to write and kind of forces out; some he literally wakes up singing; and others that are like puzzles, where it’s up to him to piece together seemingly unrelated parts.“I always wanted my music office to look like I’m trying to solve some big mystery,” he says, “like a crime that happened twenty years ago, and there is red string everywhere and I’m like, ‘What ties this to that?’ I’ll come up with a melody and sit on it for two years, find out it goes over this little poem I wrote two hours ago and suddenly it transforms into this full-blown creature.”
The Austin, Texas-based singer-songwriter (real name: Alejandro Rose-Garcia) is perhaps best-known for his solo act, for which he sings, plays guitar and beats a kick drum with his heel. Adding to the image of a vagabond musician, he’s often bleary-eyed and sweating through a wife beater, appearing very much hungover and wrung-out.…