Photo by Nikolai Puc Photography

“I don’t really wear a lot of suspenders anymore,” Alejandro Rose-Garcia, aka Shakey Graves, tells me from a small town in British Columbia with “a pretty dramatic landscape.” While out touring with his latest release, the self-described “gentleman from Texas” admits his musical moniker is a character he’s built, an image he’s projected out into the world. And his musical endeavors under the alias are, or at least should be, just as malleable as the image itself.

Rose-Garcia made a name for himself as a one-man show, playing the guitar while simultaneously using his heels to play a kick drum embedded in an old suitcase. (The contraption has inspired a plethora of DIY videos and instruction blogs so people at home can build their own.) And while he still brings it on the road, and plays some of those old songs with it during his live show, the suitcase drum is no longer the cornerstone of his sets, or the persona of Shakey Graves. Neither are the suspenders.

“Of course there are the people who are like, ‘I want you to play a suitcase drum for an hour and a half in front of me,’ but I’m just not going to,” Rose-Garcia says. “Not that I can’t, but I wouldn’t.”

Fans shouldn’t be too surprised, however. He announced his newest album, Can’t Wake Up, via a December 2017 tweet admonishing his followers to “sell your suspenders” in anticipation of a “new sound.” The record is a surreal, dreamlike exploration of fantasies and fears, backed by a full band and replete with a distinct rock-pop sound that stands apart from his earlier folk-Americana roots.

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