By Will Brown

Fresh from performing at Auckland City Limits last Saturday, Shakey Graves now heads to Wellington to play one show tonight at Bodega. We were lucky enough to get a bit of time with Shakey Graves following the festival and fired a few questions his way.

How was Auckland City Limits?

It was really fun. Really really enjoyed it, yeah. It was kind of like a parallel universe because being from Austin, everything was in the same font as the Austin City Limits and was in the same style. Except it was like a tropical paradise.

Did you manage to check out some other bands and artists?

Oh yeah, absolutely. We were busy for big portions of the day but I watched the Cold War Kids; they were impressive, I really liked their set. I saw a little bit of Modest Mouse and saw a band from Brooklyn called Highly Suspect. It was cool having it less spread out to a certain degree, they pretty much 2 stages going. At other festivals it can be a little daunting and easy to miss something, it made it a little more digestible.

What are you up to between now and the Wellington show on Wednesday?

We’re actually going to drive down there so will do a little road trip. No idea where we’re going on the way. Everyone’s like “Go here, go there”, and I’m like “I want to do all this stuff”. We’ve have goggles and fins and stuff, so I want to go in the water and see some sea life. So we’ll figure that out.

Where are you heading after the Wellington show?

We’re heading to Australia to play the Byron Bay Blues Fest. And I think we’re playing a show with The Decemberists and picking up some other stuff. Doing a little micro trip through Australia.

You released your last album ‘And The War Came’ last year. Where did you record it?

I recorded it in my house. It took the better part of a year, or a year and a half. But we were also travelling and touring and playing a lot throughout so we recorded it in spurts.

So have you got plans to return to the studio this year?

Yeah we’ve already gone in once and done some preliminary stuff but we’ll be recording pretty much for the rest of the year.

Do you do much songwriting on the road?

It’s extremely difficult to do.  But at the same time there are plenty of other things to do besides writing, like I try to edit a lot of the stuff too. I’ve been learning Pro Tools so I can bring the hard drive and doing edits and listening to takes that we have. So there is always work to be done. And long plane rides are pretty nice for that.

Shakey Graves

Wednesday March 23rd: Bodega, Wellington

Tickets via Ticketmaster