BLURTING WITH… Grayson Capps
Oct 07, 2008
Humans are just stupid. The prolific singer-songwriter knows because he's one of them.
By RANDY HARWARD
In song or in conversation, Grayson Capps creates the sense that you're friends on a porch holdin' highball glasses or guitars or books, tellin' lies or sharin' troubles. It's ‘cause that's how he grew up, in Alabama with his father, the author Ronald Everett Capps, and a cast of characters straight out of Carson McCullers' The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. These people, like boozy lit professor Bobby Long and his buddy Fred Stokes-who became the basis for the senior Capps' novel Off Magazine Street, which was made into the film A Love Song for Bobby Long-helped Mr. Capps teach Grayson about people and life, how to observe and understand them. On his third album, Rott ‘N' Roll (Hyena), Grayson Capps wields that knowledge like a scalpel, slicing scenes from life and scoring them with his music, insight and humor, all of which are colored by the coarse but cultured lessons of the people that surround him.
Following our interview, check out the videos for "The Green Monkey Story" and a live performance of "A Love Song for Bobby Long."
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BLURT: How do you get a dog to stop humpin' your leg?
[laughs] Have I told you this one before? You couldn't print that one, could you?
BLURT: Yeah, for my Harp story [December 2006, Harp magazine] I tried to get it in there.
I don't think it made it. [Somebody told me] the family version of the punchline: "Pick ‘im up n' whack his little pecker!" Yeah, that'd be more family oriented.
BLURT: You used to split time between New Orleans and Alabama... Where are you livin' now?
I moved to Tennessee... close to Nashville; Franklin, TN. I didn't really know where to go after Katrina, [but] I got a warm reception in this area. I don't know Nashville at all... but I've got eleven acres of land and it's really awesome to be here when I get off the road, ‘cause I've got a cave in the backyard...
BLURT: A cave? How many guys have their own cave?
Not many. It's real, man. It's carved through the mountain by a spring. I've gone in there, straight back for over an hour, and still haven't reached the end. Some points, you have to crawl on your elbows, others you can stand up in these big, open areas.
BLURT: How are the acoustics?
Not as good as you'd imagine. It just goes; it's not like it echoes off of something- I also don't wanna yell too loud, I don't wanna start an cave-in. I go in there, and there's little animal remnants. I don't know what kinds or animals live in there, but there's several. There's bats in there and all kinds of stuff.
BLURT: It's dark and there are monsters...
Yeah, my daughter-I took her in there, and she's seven years old. She found this one part of the cave and decided, "Aw, that's the door to where the imps live." And she started makin' keys. I said, "What's gonna happen if you open the door?" She said [affects scared-excited voice], "I don't know!"
BLURT: Did your father being a writer influence you as a lyricist?
Oh, God. Tremendously. [He taught me] conciseness, just gettin' to the point. And somebody asked him one time, "Who would you like to meet?" He said, "Either God or Jed Clampett." The point bein', the simple truth [is what] people pay attention to. Instead of sayin', ‘I feel bad,' you get the point across better with, ‘I got my pecker caught in the windjam.' You know what I'm sayin'? There's more interestin' ways to say somethin'. He's influenced me a lot.
BLURT: One of the simplest lyrical devices is also the most deceptively complex: the repetition of a single line. You use that often on this album, like with "Sock Monkey" and "Gran Maw Maw."
"Sock Monkey" is Tom's song; that's my guitar player's song. [laughs] But uh, I actually try to avoid repetition. People like Lucinda Williams piss me off these days, ‘cause she does that too much. I say, goddamn, you got great musicians, a great producer and you're gonna say this goddamn line over again?"
BLURT: Sometimes that can work.
Sometimes it can work. I just have an oversensitive meter to whether it's laziness or choice. "Gran Maw Maw," that song I made up one night ‘cause this guy John Thomas ran this bar and this guy named Gary Coleman tried to kill a guy upstairs with a meat cleaver. And it was a bloodbath. [John Thomas] drank Grand Marnier and he called it "Gran Maw Maw," and he just drank more than ever after that. He closed the bar down because it had the onus of this massacre that had happened. So "Who takes care of big John Thomas, Gran Maw Maw" is kinda like a children's song in the spirit of "Ring Around the Rosie": Ashes, ashes, we all fall dead.
Like "goin' back to the country," I use that as a chorus. I like choruses and the old Greek theater tradition. You got the actor, and you got the chorus that comes out to recap the dialogue.
BLURT: I'm glad you explained that because the John Thomas/Gran Maw Maw line can be taken one particularly awful way.
Yeah, my son likes it. He's three years old and says, "Gran Maw Maw!" But it's about Grand Marnier. But yeah, I'm fascinated with [double-entendres]. That's just one of the cool things that entertain me, so I wanted to put it on the record.
[Lyrics Excerpt:
Who takes care of big John Thomas, Gran Maw Maw
Who takes care of big John Thomas, Gran Maw Maw
Who takes care of big John Thomas
When night time descends upon us
Gran Maw Maw, hey Gran Maw Maw, oh Gran Maw Maw]
BLURT: And suddenly, we're back to peckers.
Oh, God. Speakin' of... that damn song "Sun Don't Shine on Willy" [from the same album]. It's actually about a little possum in the backyard. I started comin' up with the song and I started singin' it out and my friend Earl's mama said, "Good Lord, why would you wanna write a song about your pecker?" I said I didn't-but I started thinkin' about it and damn! It could be.
BLURT: At least you can blame "Sock Monkey" on Tommy.
Yeah, exactly. I don't know who came up with it, but that was just a term we started usin' for a crack whore that was hangin' out with an old bass player of mine. She'd done so much drugs that her eyes looked like X's; you couldn't even see her soul. So it was like, "Alright. She's a sock monkey."
BLURT: Characters populate your songs and it's interesting that "Sock Monkey," which uses only seven words and seems like a novelty song, is actually about someone.
Yeah, it's about the angst we felt because she was just fuckin' things up. I remember her breakin' in, five o'clock in the morning, we're all passed out, and she's got the refrigerator door open, with something ridiculous- pasta, peanut butter, and like an egg or somethin'. And Earl's like, "Goddamn it, ya sock monkey! Go home! Get outta this goddamn..." So the name stuck. People love that song down South. It's like the new "Louie, Louie." [laughs]
BLURT: I don't wanna call you a freak magnet, but you attract some interesting types.
There's interesting people everywhere. I think I might be nicer to the interesting people than some people. And that way, they end up stayin' around. I'm one of those guys that if some troglodyte comes into the bar, he tends to come toward me and wanna tell me his life story or somethin'. And I don't know why that is, ‘cause I will listen... but if it gets to be too much, I'll tell him to fuck off.
But I think in some sense that is true. I think I have a little bit of empathy, this unusual... mostly from my dad's perspective. You know, it was pretty intense, growin' up, havin' that whole Carson McCullers, Bobby Long thing. You say well, that was Dad-but that was my whole life. Who are the invisible people, you know? Shiny objects [or plastic people] don't really appeal to me after bein' taught what they tend to be or represent. The prettier stuff, sometimes, is deceptive. It's like castin' your pearls among swine. Stuff looks too shiny, appeals to too many people, there's somethin' wrong with it.
BLURT: You're observant-do you also analyze things? Do you people-watch? You see some guy in the bar, do you give him a back story?
Oh, yeah. That was a game me and my dad would play when my mom would go to the mall or somethin'. Me and my dad would sit on a bench. He'd smoke cigarettes and we'd take somebody walkin' by in the crowd and say, "Alright. What's his story?" He was fascinated with people.
BLURT: Pretend that the "Fear Fruit Bearing Tree" is real; fear fruit is in the produce section. What does it look like? Does it have skin? Seeds?
Oh, it's shiny. It's one of those shiny objects. [laughs] It'd probably be perfect. It's the thing that you want when you don't need a damn thing. It makes you want it.
BLURT: How do you tell when it goes bad?
You can't, I don't think. That's a hard one. I don't think it would ever go bad. It's already inherently bad. It's more of a numbing thing. Fear fruit is not the same as the fruit Eve ate and gave to Adam. It's not the tree of knowledge; it's its own thing-it's fear. When you have fear, you no longer make rational judgments and can no longer seek. I just hope that people can get to the point where they're not so damn afraid of death. And they're not afraid of sex, or cigarettes, so much. In a metaphorical way.
BLURT: Or Gary Coleman in a cave with a meat cleaver?
Yeah, there's always Gary Coleman in a cave with a meat cleaver. You can never relax ‘cause he's always there.
The problem, with everything, stems from fear. That's the only thing that controls people. And I just think about stuff like a damn bird in a nest. That thing is braver than any human being: he doesn't go hoard worms or crickets in a refrigerator. That little animal trusts God more than any human being I have ever met. Every day he wakes up naked and trusts that this life is gonna take care of him. And it does.
Humans are just stupid. Me bein' one of ‘em.
[Photo Credit: Danny Longfinger Foster]
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BONUS BLURTS: VIDEOS FOR "THE GREEN MONKEY STORY" AND "A LOVE STORY FOR BOBBY LONG"
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