Music
by Jewly Hight
Grayson Capps takes a drag of a hand-rolled cigarette and languidly surveys his new domain, a large barn-like structure situated on a spacious plot of lush green land, bordered by a shallow creek, overgrown fields and Highway 96. He can spot the arc of the Natchez Trace Bridge from his front yard, but he’s isolated enough to amble around out back naked as a jaybird if he feels like it without fear of being charged with indecent exposure.
“Nobody can see me, you know. The whole backyard is Nakedville,” he quips in a gravelly drawl. The scene is a far cry from New Orleans, which had been Capps’ home for the past 20 years, providing him with the motley array of squatters, street musicians, prostitutes and lovers that populate many of his songs. Seeking stability in the wake of Katrina, the wiry singer-songwriter migrated to the outskirts of Nashville a few months back with his girlfriend, well-respected recording engineer Trina Shoemaker, and their young son Waylon.
Capps is preparing to release his second album, a 12-song collection titled Wail & Ride, which ties together his Brewton, Ala., youth and New Orleans years with the new season of life just begun in Tennessee. Things have picked up steam since he finished his first solo record, If You Knew My Mind, thanks in large part to the 2004 John Travolta and Scarlett Johansson film A Love Song for Bobby Long. Named for a song Capps wrote about a tragic character from his hometown, the movie featured six of his originals, including the Oscar-nominated “Lorraine’s Song.” A year later, the New York independent Hyena Records reissued his debut.
“I did landscaping for almost 20 years so I could do whatever the hell I wanted to musically,” he reflects. “The past two or three years, I’ve made a living with music, and it’s at a point where I can still do what I want to. I’m not having to change anything.”
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In part, the title Wail & Ride references Capps’ feelings about leaving the Big Easy. “I’ve cried, you know, most every time I’ve left New Orleans,” he says. “I mean, it’s just so strange, because I play there and I think, ‘Oh, I get to go home now,’ and I’m like, ‘Wait a minute—I don’t have a home here.’ ”
The album’s rollicking title track, about the unorthodox birth of a boy named Waylon, is also a nod to Capps’ son. “I wrote it when we were about to have a baby,” he recalls. “We knew it was a boy, not by choice, but just by spread eagle on the first sonogram.”
Wail & Ride
Grayson Capps (Hyena Records), Playing Saturday, 23rd at Grimey’sCapps recently joined the throng of New Orleans musicians with post-Katrina-themed songs, but resisted the temptation to sentimentalize. “New Orleans Waltz” is buoyant, tough talking and even humorous, especially when the sing-song chorus of backing vocals repeatedly intones “FEMA.” “I was hearing these songs on WWOZ [New Orleans’ 90.7 FM], and they were so damn sad and melodramatic,” he says. “I got tired of hearing the ‘Whoa, Whoa’ part of it, because the spirit of New Orleans, to me, is like ‘Fuck everybody. We’re going to do what we’re going to do anyway, and nobody’s going to mess with us.’ ”
“Jukebox,” a heartbroken honky-tonk ballad, honors a long-ago request from Capps’ Alabama childhood. “I knew that song ever since I was 4 years old,” he explains. “This guy used to come around the house—he died a long time ago—he gave it to Bobby [Long] and he was always like, ‘Go to Nashville and make a hit with this song.’ So I wanted to record it in the truest country form I could.”
Fittingly, Capps’ Nashville home provided the closing sounds of the album—cricket chirps captured with “two Shure 57s out there in the backyard.” For him, the backyard symbolizes more than just the grassy expanse behind his house. “As far as the naked thing, I meant it literally and metaphorically. The way I looked at New Orleans was, I was able to make a fool out of myself and [play] awful one night and be wonderful the next night and have people hate me or love me. And I didn’t care, because that’s where I lived, and I don’t want anybody to judge me where I live. That’s why I don’t want to compete here, you know. I don’t want it to be like a make-or-break thing. I can’t care about Nashville caring about me, you know, because this is where I’m living now, and I need to be able to walk in my backyard naked with pimples and moles and everything. If people like me [in] all my undiluted glory, they can like me.”