Shakey Graves & Trampled by Turtles

Rock ‘n’ roll and bluegrass united quite nicely at the Santa Barbara Bowl on Friday, as the popular left-of-bluegrass sensations from Duluth, Minnesota, Trampled by Turtles, brought their acoustic and attitude-basted bluegrass sound to a double bill with alt-rootsy Austinian Shakey Graves. Both bands played full sets to a happy crowd on a warm summer night.

Trampled by Turtles frontman Dave Simonett initially formed the group as a side project in 2003. As legend has it, he had lost most of his music gear thanks to a group of enterprising car thieves who’d ransacked his vehicle while he played a show with his previous band. Left with nothing more than an acoustic guitar, he began piecing together a new band, this time taking inspiration from bluegrass, folk, and other genres that didn’t rely on amplification. They  released their first record, Songs from a Ghost Town, in 2004.

Across his career, Shakey Graves — the performing name of Austin, Texas-born  Alejandro Rose-Garcia, a former actor (Friday Night Lights, the Spy Kids franchise) whose music combines blues, folk, country, and rock and roll — has intentionally created thrilling musical adventures tailored to each fan: burning CDs and putting them in personalized decorated bags; building intricate scavenger hunts that send fans in search of unique tapes; and Bandcamp-exclusive releases.

“The fans and musicians that really resonate with me — and the inexplicable ways that I find things that I like — are usually entirely through randomness and chaos and accident,” Rose-Garcia says. “I’ve always been on this quest to make people feel like my own music is a choose your own adventure.”