Shakey Graves: "What I'm Trying to Do Is About Storytelling; It's About the Human Struggle"

"There is a reason I have a stage name," Alejandro Rose-Garcia (AKA Shakey Graves) admits. "There is something to be said about performing outside of yourself. I feel that when a lot of people get onstage, they become a bigger version of themselves. It's the classic becoming the band."

But Shakey Graves isn't a "band." He's a one-man show and considered by many in Austin to be the greatest one-man show in a city that prides itself as the live music capital of the world.

Photo by JARRED GASTRIECH

An excerpt from the Austin Chronicle earlier last month:

"Over the last year, the Austin native's risen out of the singer-songwriter scrap heap and amassed a big enough fan base to merit a weekly residency at the Parish, which he's filled to near capacity on the first two Wednesdays in January.

"What I'm trying to do is about storytelling," he says. "I'm not really trying to play folk music or blues or one-man-band stuff. There's a long tradition of people I respect from poets to loud rockers, whatever -- it's about the human struggle. And I know that sounds cheesy, but I feel that with the live shows I put on, I really come to perform in front of people."

Rose-Garcia credits his compelling live show partly to his acting background.

"There is a stage-persona aspect of playing music," he says. "And I feel that acting and doing theater, all this training I've had with getting outside of my body in front of people -- that's sort of what it feels like -- has done me a lot of good. I feel really privileged to be able to perform in a way that doesn't really feel like me."