Click here to download a free MP3 of Grayson Capps’ “I Can’t Hear You.”
There are two main forces that drove Grayson Capps to become a singer-songwriter. One was his interest in acting, the other his fascination with prophet figures. While studying theater at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Alabama native came under the influences of a professor who, in Capps’ words, believed that “the real live theater of today, outside the big cities, is rock and roll.” Capps fully embraced that notion.
“I was in a band called the House Levelers,” he explains, “which was actually a bunch of actors acting like musicians. We didn’t know how to play a damn thing, but we knew how to put on a show. It became a question of, do I want to do soap operas, or go to New York and go through the rigmarole of being on Broadway, or do I want to do theater now? I wanted to do theater now, and the most immediate access to that was playing music in bars.”
As for his fascination with religious figures, that came from Capps’ father, a renegade high school teacher who instilled in son a love of literature and philosophy.
“My daddy had all kinds of religions he threw at me,” Capps says. “I was captivated by the idea of prophets, and by Jesus Christ. One day while I was home visiting from school, I went to my great-grandmother’s church. The preacher said, ‘If Jesus were here today, where would he be? Would he be here, inside this church? No, he would be in the bars, and in the brothels, where people need him.’ I thought, ‘Damn, I want to figure something out, and offer something, but that’s my world.’ That’s what started me in this direction.”
Listening to Capps’ solo albums—2005’s If You Knew My Mind, 2006’s Wail & Ride, and the just-released home-demo disc Songbones—it’s clear that Capps indeed has much to offer. His touchstones range from Bob Dylan to Tom Waits to Kris Kristofferson, but his backwoods blend of outlaw toughness and bayou mystery is distinctly his own. A resident of New Orleans for 20 years, he imbibed the city’s spirit in the manner of past scribes like Charles Bukowski and Tennessee Williams. Capps cites both writers as prime inspirations.
“I grew up really loving the work of Tennessee Williams,” he says. “That gave me a big, romantic perspective on New Orleans. Plus, growing up in small town Alabama, I saw New Orleans as this wonderfully sleazy place that was filled with romantic, divine decadence. And it is that. There are no straight lines in New Orleans. It’s a rotten place where graveyards are being swallowed up by the ground. You’ll see a guy drunk in the gutter and assume he’s some sort of idiot, but a lot of those people are geniuses who somehow ended up coming there to die.”
The apex of Capps’ love affair with New Orleans came in December 2004, when the film A Love Song for Bobby Long hit theaters. Based on a novel by Capps’ father, the movie started John Travolta and Scarlett Johansson. In addition to featuring several of Capps’ songs, the movie afforded him an on-screen cameo appearance. The flirtation with Hollywood didn’t exactly make Capps a household name, but it did give him a valuable calling card.
“It’s given me some validity, in a minor sort of way,” he says. “I can pretty much play anywhere in the country, or anywhere in Europe, and there will be 15 people who show up who know my music from that movie. That’s not a big deal, but if I put on a good show, those 15 people will double next time around. It’s given me a foothold. I think anyone in the business needs something like that, whether it’s having written a Tim McGraw hit or having been in a rotten little movie. It helps to have something to differentiate you from the millions of other people trying to make music.”
Although the Crescent City remains Capps’ primary muse, these days he makes his home in Franklin, Tennessee. Even before Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc upon the city, Capps was teetering on the cusp of leaving his beloved New Orleans. Three months before the storm struck, a gang of kids hurled a rock at Capps’ car, narrowly missing his then-5-month-old son. In the end, fatherhood trumped all.
“When that happened, I thought, ‘I can’t deal with this,’” Capps admits. “And then, when the storm came, things got way out of control, for raising kids. It was depressing to see my favorite neighborhoods suddenly gone. For me, uptown and the French Quarter are the least of what I really loved about New Orleans. What I liked were these little neighborhoods where a fellow would catch 10 catfish, and give six of them to his neighbors, and then they would share some of their broccoli patch with him. Things like that. And they’re the people who got displaced—the big heart and soul of New Orleans.”
Capps goes on to say that despite the travails of the past couple of years, he remains an optimist at heart. Once again, he credits his father for teaching him that hope is integral to good art.
“He said ‘Son, if you can’t provide hope, don’t do it,’” Capps explains. “That advice sticks with me more than any other advice I’ve heard from anybody, as far as songwriting goes, or just being an artist in general. There are a lot of artists out there who wallow in misery, who don’t provide a way out. You can lead people down bad paths, as an artist. But it’s important that you not just stay in a hole. You have to show people a way to get out.”
Capps’ Guitars:
Capps’ “desert island” guitar is a 1946 Gibson LG-2. “I probably wouldn’t even be playing music if I didn’t have that guitar,” he says. “It’s one of those guitars that loves to be played. It’s very mid-range-y and bass-y, and it never goes out of tune. It’s got a great low-end, and it melds with my voice really well. I love it and it loves me.”
His other guitars include a J-45, an ES-125, and a Firebird. “I’ve kind of gone nuts with guitars lately,” he says. “I’ve found that some guitars tend to have one or two songs in them. They kind of take me out of the safety zone I have with my little LG-2.”