Back home in Alabama, Grayson Capps celebrates the reissuing of his debut record.
This week’s blog post has been a long time coming.
Back in 2012, when Grayson Capps released his last record, Grayson Capps & The Lost Cause Minstrels, I ran a track on Trail Mix and promised his publicist a blog post. A litany of reasons – none of them good, so it’s probably best to call them poor excuses – got in the way and the blog post about what is a tremendous record never materialized.
I’ve never been comfortable not following through on a promise, so upon learning that Grayson would be reissuing his debut record, If You Knew My Mind, this month to mark the tenth anniversary of its release, I knew the day for my penance was at hand.
And woe to me for waiting so long. If I had only known that Grayson made for such a great interview, I would have reached out to this long-wandering minstrel years ago.
Finally, and after way too long, I have caught up with Grayson Capps to chat about songwriting, the South, and Alabama heat.
BRO – You are celebrating the tenth anniversary of your debut record, If You Knew My Mind, this month. How have those songs evolved over the last decade?
GC – The songs in If You Knew My Mind have become solid fixtures in my repertoire and are so well known by the musicians who play with me and the audience alike that I have gotten comfortable stretching and bending them to the point of them hardly being recognized sometimes. They have more of a jam band aspect to them these days and still remain fresh and dear to me.
BRO – Your dad is the writer Ronald Everett Capps. Got a favorite sentence that he wrote?
GC – “Change is the only constant. Don’t waste your time trying to stop it.”
BRO – Is there something about being from The South that distinguishes your songwriting from that of writers from other regions?
GC – Being from The South ties a person to a deep seeded history of a secret language with which people all over the world identify. The Alabama red clay stains your soul blood-colored, and it stays that way the rest of your life. No kind of washing will ever get rid of it. So, I reckon the answer is yes, being from the South distinguishes me from writers from other regions – no better, no worse, just different.
BRO – We are featuring “Lorraine’s Song” on this month’s Trail Mix. What’s the story behind the song?
GC – “Lorraine’s Song” was written specifically for the movie A Love Song for Bobby Long. It was inspired by the real Bobby Long and his traveling companion during his later years, Barbara. She was a great big Cheeto eating woman who had escaped from an insane asylum out of North Florida. She was real ugly and cackled like a screech owl, but Bobby would put his arms around her and say, “This is Barbara, isn’t she beautiful?” It taught me a great lesson about humanity. Everyone is beautiful if you look at them in the right light.
BRO – You have moved back to southern Alabama. Summer is approaching. Best advice on how to beat the heat?
GC – A little bit of weed and a whole lot of creek dipping.
You can catch Grayson Capps with Corky Hughes and John Milham tonight at Plow in Fairhope, Alabama, and tomorrow night at Blue Nile in New Orleans, Louisiana, with his cohorts in Willie Sugarcapps.
For more information on Grayson Capps, surf on over to his website, and be sure to check out “Lorraine’s Song” on this month’s Trail Mix.
And, for those of you who are interested in getting your hands on a copy of the reissued If You Knew My Mind, we have a little trivia contest for you. Grayson Capps and his team were kind enough to offer up a copy of the CD to one lucky winner who correctly answers the question below. Shoot your answers to [email protected]. A winner will be chosen from all of the correct answers received by noon on Thursday, April 30th.
Good luck!
Question . . . . A Love Song For Bobby Long, the movie mentioned above, was based on what novel written by Grayson Capps’ dad, Ronald Everett Capps?
