#30afest #30atv #subscribe http://30a.tv ou can hear it in the tone of his voice when he speaks, in the thoughtful, laconic way he reflects on the sometimes-tumultuous course of his life and work. It’s not the sound of complacency or comfort, but rather of personal growth and understanding. Capps is not without worry or darkness in his life, but he’s reached a kind of peace with it, an unhurried acceptance that enables him to write with unflinching honesty and remarkable humanity. His long-awaited new solo album, ‘Scarlett Roses,’ is his first in six years, and it showcases the kind of understated brilliance that can blossom when creativity is detached from expectation, when songs are truly given the space and time to find their writer. Grayson Capps is relaxed, but it wasn’t always this way. “Up until 2011, I was expecting myself to come up with a new record every year,” says Capps, “but then something just clicked. I told myself, ‘Man, you don’t need to worry about the timing. Just let these songs and your career catch up with you.’” The Alabama native moved back to his home state with his wife, the Grammy Award-winning engineer/producer Trina Shoemaker, and cut himself loose from the self-imposed deadlines he’d been adhering to for the better part of a decade. He built a writing shack in his backyard and christened it a sacred space for creation without targets or schedules. There, he tapped deep into his subconscious, channeling the songs that would become ‘Scarlett Roses’ from a trance-like state in which the music practically bubbled up out of him like water from a spring. Hailed by NPR’s Mountain Stage for his “unbridled energy and authenticity,” Capps first emerged as a solo artist in 2005 following stints in the New Orleans thrash folk band the House Levelers, which he joined while still a student studying theater at Tulane, and his subsequent blues-rock group, Stavin’ Chain. New Orleans Times Picayune writing that “his character-based narratives are guaranteed to make you ache and exult” and Exclaim! calling it “a Southern gothic tour de force.” After Hurricane Katrina forced Capps to relocate to Franklin, TN, he went on to release a string of similarly exalted albums that earned him devoted followings in both the US and Europe, including 2006’s ‘Wail & Ride,’ which JamBase said “hums with quiet wisdom and unforced momentum;” 2007’s ‘Songbones,’ described by All Music as “poetry filled with the bloody glory and taut acceptance of real life on the bottom;” and 2008’s ‘Rott & Roll,” an album that prompted American Songwriter to declare, “Take the poetry of Texas troubadour Townes Van Zandt, combine with Steve Earle’s edgy attitude and stir with a little cup of ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIxVVfFoAgQ