Shakey Graves

Solid, shambling, raw rock.  I reviewed his debut album a few months ago, and honestly I did a pretty through job of discussing him back then.  If you aren't into clicking on old links, know this:

• Austin High Maroon (like fellow ACL'er Gary Clark Jr.  Loyal Forever, baby!).
• His stage name came from a campout with friends when a drunk/high dude and muttered something like "spooky wagons." The guys on the campout then made their own camp scary names, and this guy's was Shakey Graves.
• You should watch him play everything by himself

Simple and tight, but raw and feral.  His debut album (And The War Came) got positive reviews and looks to have gotten some good listening on Spotify as well, with several songs over a million listens. Strangely enough, Austin is only his second most popular town on YouTube, right behind Denver. I wonder why?  He also had a major spike in viewers on May 1 of this year, which is interesting - from about 4.3k a day to 8.3k for that day.  Must have been featured somewhere for something, but the only thing I find online is that he was supposed to play a show in Richmond that night but had to cancel because of laryngitis. Maybe everyone had a YouTube watch party that night to make up for the missed show.

His most popular track, by far, is "Dearly Departed" with almost 10 million listens.  Next closest is back at 1.3 million.

This music is fun rock and roll, that just skirts my sweet spot.  I think a full band would help him flesh out the songs a bit more to really capture the fun of these songs.  A tight bass line, someone really playing the drums instead of just kick and tambourine, and I think these could be even better. That being said, I still dig what he's doing here and will almost definitely go see him jam out in October.