Description
“Songwriting is my way of navigating the world. It makes me feel free and fulfilled,” says Alabama-based singer-songwriter Grayson Capps. “When I make a record, it’s on my own terms and at my own pace.”
The Weight of the World is Capps’ first full-length album of original material in nine years. He returns to form with nine songs encompassing the barefoot, country boy philosophizing and earthy musical minimalism that have come to define his singular voice on the American roots music landscape.
Co-produced by Ryan Avinger and his longtime guitarist Corky Hughes at Dauphin Street Sound in Mobile, AL, Capps opens the record with “Far Away,” a windswept road song that romanticizes the trials and tribulations of the troubadour life. It’s followed by “News,” a five-minute blast of psychedelic swamp rock calling out the fear-centric disinformation propagated by modern media. “Your psychic antennas need to be up to decipher truth from lies these days,” Capps says. It’s one of two tracks reflecting on the state of the times; the other, “My Body,” is an evocative rock ‘n’ roll anthem for women’s rights that doubles as a battle cry for an impending revolution.
As the LP unfolds, Capps offers the classic high-and-lonesome country balladry of “What Will Be, Will Be,” the voodoo psych surrealism of “Rainbow Skies,” and the title track, “The Weight of the World,” a languid meditation on stillness. “Rosemary & Time” dates back to his years with the Americana supergroup Willie Sugarcapps, while the haunted desperation of “I Can’t Breathe” is juxtaposed against the whimsical, marimba-inflected lilt of “Herricane.” All the while, Hughes’ empathic guitar lines bring vivid color to the spirit within each song, and soul/gospel singer Symone French adds a feminine levity with angelic harmonies.
“I’m getting back to where I was a long time ago, just having this emotion and texture in the music,” explains Capps. “I’m singing better than ever, and creatively I feel like I’m returning to the frenetic pace of my earlier work.”
Capps has good reason for the years away from the studio. After a prolific run of solo albums from 2005 through 2017, he and his partner, Grammy Award-winning recording engineer Trina Shoemaker, entered the homestretch of raising children: “My fledglings have all flown away, there’s an empty nest of yesterday,” as he sings on the title track. Simultaneously, he was caring for his father whose health was slowly deteriorating. He’d pass away in 2025. While continuing to play upwards of 150 shows a year in all corners of the world, the day-to-day responsibilities of looking after his family left little time for the solitude his songwriting demanded.
Just as comfortable in front of thousands at a “quirky, crazy festival” as he is before 30 people at a house party, Capps is first and foremost authentic in his presentation. He weaves lyrical nuance steeped in Southern Gothic lineage through woody Gulf Coast folk and cosmic country-blues. The raw magic he conjures has resulted in a devoted cult fanbase, built entirely on his own terms. Growing older has only reinforced his steely commitment to inhabiting the present and calling the spirit toward its natural state. In Capps’ songs, the beauty we long to see is all around.
“As within, so without. That’s how I address the weight of the world through my songs,” says Capps. “‘If you speak your truth people may not get it exactly, but they will get their own truth. But if you don’t speak your truth, they get nothing. So I speak my truth.”
