Rott ‘N’ Roll. The title originated with Grayson Capps’ fans in New Orleans as an explanation of his music. Prostitutes, alcoholics, vagrants and drifters often inhabit the southern troubadour’s songs, while his live performances are ignited by sanctified Southern soul, howling back-country stomp and raucous roadhouse blues.. Slowly, but surely, the phrase spread from one city to the next as the definition of the Grayson Capps experience. For Grayson himself, Rott ‘N’ Roll has come to represent the state of mind needed to play uncompromising roots music as a means for survival in the Dirty South; the yin and yang between the debauchery of life on the road and the come down upon returning home.. Yet, as Grayson makes clear on “Back To The Country,” the album’s opening track, when Rott ‘N’ Roll is the credo, even the serenity of home means, “eating cornbread and raising hell.”


Grayson Capps first discovered music in Alabama where he was born and raised. His father and friends would sit around the house getting drunk, telling stories and strumming acoustic guitars. They’d run down songs by Hank Williams, Tom T. Hall, Glenn Campbell and Woodie Guthrie to name but a few. The idealism of those “Cannery Row” experiences would come to define his outlook on the world. Heading off to Tulane University as a theater major on scholarship, Grayson also took up playing music. He’d form two bands that would have moderate national success—The House Levelers and Stavin’ Chain— receiving acclaim in publications like Spin and USA Today and opening shows for Keith Richards, The Replacements and Crowded House. After graduating college, he took to squatting with friends in a string of abandoned houses on the outskirts of the Big Easy, stealing electricity, growing a garden and busking for whatever money was needed. Grayson recounts those times on a number of songs off his debut album, If You Knew My