Folks who showed up to see Shakey Graves on Tuesday and expected to see the cowboy-hat-and-t-shirt-wearing folky songwriter on stage at Red Butte might have been a little confused.
They got an entirely different guy. This version wore cuffed black hipster overalls, was more chatty and seemed to be more comfortable in his own skin. More his real self, Alejandro Rose-Garcia, and less the Texas cowboy persona he has relied on.
“Well, hello, everyone,” he greeted the sold-out crowd like he’d bumped into a few thousand people in his living room.
As much as Graves has tried to distance himself from his roots as a street busker once upon a time, it was a focal point of his show, playing nearly an hour by himself, with just a guitar and his suitcase kick-drum in front of a set of lit-up buildings, puffy cotton clouds and several psychedelic televisions — a set Graves later said he made himself in his backyard.