If you missed the Mountain Stage broadcast on your local radio station, don't worry. NPR has it posted on their site. Just click the link and enjoy!

from: JamBase.com

Grayson Capps & The Stumpknockers: Rott 'N' Roll

By: Dennis Cook

Some albums stun us slow, taking us more like the rising heat of a great kiss than a frying pan to the head. Until you let 'em in, let 'em have their way with you a bit, you may not realize what you're holding. In many respects, this description fits the entire career of Grayson Capps but never more so than Rott 'N' Roll (Hyena Records), a singer-songwriter driven future classic that roasts one with deliberate, charcoal intensity. The first Capps album credited to Grayson and his longtime salt of the earth band, The Stumpknockers, hangs together with the post-journeyman mastery of Creedence Clearwater Revival's Cosmo's Factory or John Prine's Bruised Orange, with the added virtue of greater emotional heft than either of those revered records and the palpable embrace of a delightful group chemistry that infuses and elevates every little element.

Full of $5 dollar whores, cornbread, sock monkeys and folks caught forever in shadow, Rott 'N' Roll firmly establishes Capps as one of the preeminent musical blacksmiths currently swinging a hammer. The physicality of this description is intentional; there's the slap and sweat of hard labor to Capps & The Stumpknockers, a dirt on the neck, three days past needin' laundry, eight ways tired but still standing tenacity. Their gutbucket rumble drips with real human things – sex and poverty, desperation and suspicious happiness – and the punch 'n' stumble of their just-together-as-it-needs-to-be playing speaks of a profound, shared belief in the task at hand. Rather than taking the usual route of many roots flavored musicians, where the longer they run they slicker they become, Capps is at his most ramble tamble here, chooglin' with guys who've spent long hours living inside his songs. From the breathy, scarred spaces of "Ike" to the jump blues entendre of "Big Ole Woman" and "Gran Maw Maw," this band serves the tunes with penitent grace. The blurred photo of Capps and his boys playing on the inside of the CD - eyes closed, heads thrown back - tells you everything you need to know about the philosophy behind this set, namely if you ain't feelin' it then take your dead ass home.

Rott 'N' Roll is, by turns, highly amusing and highly affecting. On a dime, Capps can make you chuckle and then swiftly leave you choking back a lump in your throat.

Click here to read the complete article at JamBase.com...

Grayson Capps Upcoming Tour Dates:

• Dec 12 2008 / Soul Kitchen / Mobile, Alabama
• Dec 13 2008 / Private Party / Josephine, Alabama
• Dec 19 2008 / Variety Playhouse, Little Five Points / Atlanta, Georgia
• Jan 15 2009 / Smith’s Olde Bar / Atlanta, Georgia
• Jan 16 2009 / The Nick / Birmingham, Alabama
• Jan 17 2009 / The Basement  / Nashville, Tennessee

Links:

graysoncapps.com
myspace.com/graysoncapps
hyenarecords.com/graysoncapps

Interview: Grayson Capps

This preacher's son and New Orleans resident recently performed in NYC at Banjo Jim's, and in the streets for Blender.

Click here to watch the interview at Blender.com

graysoncapps.com
myspace.com/graysoncapps

from: NoDepression.com

Grayson Capps - Rott N Roll

Grayson Capps is not just a seriously good songwriter – if one who has relied quite heavily at times on the exaggerated color of deep-south character sketches – he's also an entertainer of the rarest sort: a master of variety, humor and engaging storytelling who manages to seem warm and familiar and larger-than-life at the same time. (In point of fact, he majored in theater at Tulane, which explains a lot.)

Anyone who has seen Capps live already knows his theatrical strengths. Rott 'N' Roll, his fourth album for Hyena Records, helps drives those strengths home. It lacks the epic stories he tells onstage to introduce songs and let the audience in on his characters' eccentricities; including those would have made this a two-disc set. But it's by far his most varied offering to date, with country (of shuffle, ballad and rockabilly varieties), boozy sing-alongs, slow-burning R&B, hill country blues, ferocious rock, and even spoken-word poetry. The Stumpknockers, his backing crew, are in fine, ragged-edged, bar-band form.

Capps' sense of humor shows. He can be joyfully coarse (as in "Big Ole Woman", a new take on an old blues theme) or grin at the thought of behaving badly (as he does during "Psychic Channel Blues"). The poem here – "Fear Fruit Bearing Tree" – comes off as a dramatic, philosophical moment, but it's immediately followed by "Sock Monkey", a rock 'n' roll number centered on the lyrics, "Sock monkey, X's for eyes." That's clearly the work of someone who takes himself just seriously enough.

Click here to read the full article @ NoDepression.com...

graysoncapps.com
myspace.com/graysoncapps
hyenarecords.com/graysoncapps

from: Glide Magazine

Grayson Capps
Rott-N-Roll

By Shawn Donohue
November 04, 2008

"I'm going back to the country/cause country's what I am" Grayson Capps sure as shit is country, he is "eatin' cornbread and raising hell" an singing about "Big Ole Woman", but how many other good ole country boys pontificate on Oscar Wilde and Salsamaggiore, Italy? Grayson Capps has got more then a little poet in him, a whole lot of living to talk about and with the help of the Stumpknockers backing him up he explores his roots and then manages to fly above them on Rott-N-Roll.

From the sweet syrupy production and playing on "Psychic Channel Blues" and "The Waltz," to the rawness of "Big Black Buzzard" and "Sock Monkey," this is the sound of southern renaissance after floods and hardships. The enigma of the American South streams through Capps's best songs here like whiskey (click here to read the full review at GlideMagazine.com...).