Shakey Graves Comes Home to Himself on *Fondness, Etc.* — and to Fort Tuthill Next Month

Alejandro Rose-Garcia has spent fifteen years being the one-man-band guy — the busker with the suitcase kick drum who turned a gimmick into a genuinely strange and lovely catalog. On May 16, 2026, the Austin musician known as Shakey Graves released Fondness, Etc., a home-recorded fifth studio album that trades the stomp-and-holler for something woozier and more interior (shakeygraves.com; shakeygraves.bandcamp.com). It's the record of a guy who became a father and stopped performing for the back row — and it lands in Flagstaff at the right moment, because he plays the Pepsi Amphitheater at Fort Tuthill on August 25.

The album is worth your time on its own terms. Fondness, Etc. is the sound of an artist rebalancing — Paste called it a "masterclass in woozy, avant-garde folk and restrained indie rock," and that restraint is the story (pastemagazine.com). Where earlier Shakey Graves records reached for the rafters, this one leans in close: string quartets, warm tape hiss, the cover of Frankie Sunswept's "Time Flies" that arrived with the announcement. It's a headphones album from a guy who built his name on being a festival-stage spectacle, and the tension between those two modes is the whole point.

Why run it here, in a Flagstaff blog, for an Austin artist? Because the amphitheater is why. Fort Tuthill's late-summer calendar is doing something quietly impressive in 2026 — stacking exactly the kind of critically-respected, medium-large acts that make a mountain shed feel like a real destination rather than a nostalgia circuit (pepsiamp.com). Shakey Graves under the ponderosas at dusk, working through the hushed corners of a new record, is a near-perfect use of an outdoor room at altitude. The lawn was built for songs that breathe.

There's a scene-health argument too. When a venue programs an artist mid-catalog-shift — not the greatest-hits nostalgia play, but the guy touring a brand-new, deliberately weird record — it signals a booking philosophy that trusts its audience. That trust is how a market grows up. A town that will buy a ticket to hear an artist's uncomfortable new songs, not just the ones from the beer commercial, is a town touring acts start taking seriously.

Stream Fondness, Etc. before the show. Sit with "Time Flies." Then, if you can swing a late-August Tuesday, go watch a restless songwriter play it into the dark at 7,000 feet. Bring a blanket. Bring patience. This one rewards both.

Sources: Shakey Graves — official site; Fondness, Etc. — Bandcamp; Fondness, Etc. review — Paste; Pepsi Amphitheater event lineup