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. To wit, this juxtaposition of opening verses on “Big Ole Woman” and the following cut, “Guitar”:

I ain’t got no wood, I ain’t got no gas
I need me a baby with big ol’ ass
I need a big ol’ woman (big ol’ woman)
I need a big ol’ woman to keep me warm

Then…

Oh my mama, what became of me
My bones and my brain feelin’ differently
Am I the same person I was when I was five or
Did something in me grow up and die
Grow up and die

His facility at playing both ends of the emotional spectrum has never been stronger than this set, and Capps further expands his range with a brief, pointed spoken word piece (“Fear Fruit Bearing Tree”) and a balls-to-the-walls barnstormer of an instrumental, “Bacon,” that closes Rott. One senses the floodgates are open after this album. Teamed with musicians that invest his material with multilayered nuances, Capps sings like a man freed of any chains. Not since Todd Snider have I been so struck by the abundant humanity and skill of a new Southern songsmith. Listening to Capps romance and howl in a gritty voice caught somewhere between John Fogerty and Charlie Rich with a beautiful catch all his own, one feels drawn into incarnation, settled into life, awash in ideas too true to ignore. That Capps and his crew can bring us to this place through the power of song, sharing the reflections of their lives in a way that illuminates our own, is glorious, and so is Rott ‘N’ Roll.

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