shakey graves

Shakey Graves & Jess Williamson: “True Love Will Find You In The End” (Live at Longhorn Cavern)

When it comes to natural landmarks, Texas is absolutely teeming with them. From meteor craters and sinkholes to canyons, rivers, forests, mountain ranges, lakes, and caverns, our vast landscape offers a ton of variety to make up for those long car rides. And none of that Earth-born beauty could be conserved as well as it has been without the Texas Parks & Wildlife Foundation, who just celebrated the centennial of Texas State Parks last year.

If you missed it, TPWF recently teamed up with KUTX favorite Walker Lukens to produce Texas Wild, a collection of iconic Texas tunes performed by some of the Lone Star’s finest to commemorate that hundred-year legacy of astonishing state parks. That eleven-track vinyl packs a wallop on its own, no doubt, but because everything’s bigger when you’re here, the Texas Wild team just had to make some extra hay for this salute.

So, alongside the KUTX Multimedia Crew, Walker, The Bright Light Social Hour, Shakey Graves, and Jess Williamson took a field trip out to Longhorn Cavern State Park in Burnet to bask in the ancestral acoustics and primal reverb that only an eon-old limestone cave can provide. Their chamber-filling rendition of Daniel Johnston’s “True Love Will Find You In The End” can haunt any home stereo, but to fully immerse yourself in this one-of-a-kind space, you gotta check out the video. Because like witnessing all-star set of stalagmites suddenly come to life, with outward reverence for their surroundings and instruments at the ready, it’s a visual treat that plants you into a truly magical habitat, one you won’t want to leave when the music’s over.

Shakey Graves: “Unlucky Skin”

With the arrival of folks like Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, there’s no doubting that Austin’s changed. But one of the Live Music Capital’s biggest mainstays continues to help shape Austin culture with his folksy arrangements and sweaty live performances. I’m talking about Alejandro Rose-Garcia, better known to the world as Shakey Graves, who’s escalated his fame well past the local realm (though he does have his own official day here) and become a defining Texas troubadour for younger generations.

Graves self-released his debut LP Roll the Bones a whopping ten years back and to commemorate the journey since then, today he’s released Roll the Bones X, a tenth year anniversary full restoration-remaster along with a second disc that digs up and dusts off some of Shakey’s greatest rarities. Roll the Bones X dropped this morning and Shakey Graves plays a sold out show tonight at Nutty Brown Amphitheater, so give Roll the Bones X a spin when you can, starting a layer up on the aural epidermis with “Unlucky Skin”!

This Song: Shakey Graves

For an artist who got his start as a one-man band, it may come as a surprise that one of Shakey Graves favorite pieces of music comes from one of the most famous musicals of all time. On this episode, Austin’s Shakey Graves talks about his childhood love of the “Overture” from Phantom of the Opera and how it helped him explore his own theatricality on his latest album, Can’t Wake Up.

📸 Julia Reihs/KUTX

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Listen to Shakey Grave’s new record “Can’t Wake Up.”

Check out Shakey Grave’s Tour Dates

Listen to Songs from Episode 130 of This Song