Powered by the success, “Dearly Departed,” his collaboration with Denver’s Esme Patterson, Shakey Graves plays four sold out shows in Colorado on Dec. 11-14.
On Halloween morning in 2013, Alejandro Rose-Garcia sat in ’s Colorado home, where the two musicians spent a few hours writing their first song together.
Rose-Garcia, the Austin-based singer-songwriter who performs as , and Patterson, known for her solo material and work with Denver indie-folk band , met each other on tour that previous year, but had never performed together.
Halloween night, , where Rose-Garcia and Patterson debuted the song, written only a few hours beforehand.
“We just wrote it and brought sheets of music on stage and were wearing ridiculous costumes, and people just went crazy,” Rose-Garcia said of the song’s debut at the Boulder Theater. “It was probably one of the craziest reactions to a song I’ve had ever.”
A little less than a year after its debut, that song, called “Dearly Departed,” appeared on Shakey Graves’ 2014 album “And the War Came.” It has been played more than 4 million times on Spotify, and in mid-October, Rose-Garcia and Patterson for hundreds of thousands of late-night viewers.
“Now I’m getting text messages from friends that they’re hearing that song at a bowling alley in Arizona,” Rose-Garcia said. “The song has caught on maybe even more than I wanted or she wants it. Itap timely for some reason. And I feel like both she and I are partially responsible for it, but the song wrote itself really fast. We did it within maybe three or four hours, and usually I’ll toil over a song for months.”
Patterson contributes vocals on two more tracks on Shakey Graves’ latest release. In each, the male-female vocals weave around one another, providing balanced harmonies with Western, front-porch twang. Judging solely on the success of the Patterson-assisted tracks, it seems that Rose-Garcia has found the best complement to his traveling singer-songwriter aesthetic.
“It was kind of a surprise to both of us,” Rose-Garcia said of the artistic relationship between him and Patterson. “She’s been singing in a three-part harmony band (Paper Bird, ) for most of her career, so she has a good ear for that. When I’ve recorded, I’ve always done harmonies with myself and I’ve never had much of an opportunity to experiment with that with someone else in a live setting.”
Patterson’s presence on Shakey Graves’ material might be part of the reason for Rose-Garcia’s phenomenal success in Colorado, he said. On Dec. 11-13, he’ll be playing three back-to-back sold-out shows at Denver’s Bluebird Theater. And after that he plays another sold-out show at the Ivywild School in Colorado Springs — a string of packed houses that he calls “a record.”
But, while Rose-Garcia admits that these “are Esme’s stomping grounds,” it might also have something to do with the Denver-Austin connection.
“There’s been artists that have always gone between Texas and Colorado pretty consistently,” Rose-Garcia said. “I think it has more to do with the people more than the location specifically. There’s just a similar human that lives in both of these spots.”
Along with the four sold-out shows in Colorado, Shakey Graves and Patterson (billed as an opening act) embarked on a fall tour that included sold-out appearances in Portland, New York, Seattle, San Francisco and Chicago. Itap a tour that, with Patterson’s presence, also marks Rose-Garcia’s first run with a three-, four- and five-piece band.
Having started as a one-man band — Rose-Garcia on guitar and vocals while keeping rhythm with a foot pedal and a suitcase — Shakey Graves has grown into a multi-musician live act.
“I would have done it sooner if I could have found the people or afforded to. In the long run Itap … a project that I set up that I’m still expanding upon.
“Showing up and showing people more is definitely the direction that is going to continue. The kind of music that I want to continue to make, it gets harder and harder to just do it by myself because of the sounds I want to get out of it.”
And in Denver, this live lineup might expand even more. While Rose-Garcia said things are still in the planning phase, it wouldn’t be unusual to see opening acts like Gregory Alan Isakov or Desert Noises join him on stage.
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