The Return

After hurricane Katrina Gracey Kallifracks returned to his ancestral homeland in the Boggy Swamp of Swampy Bogginess, on the outskirts of Thursday City in the Valley of Keene—hopes, ambitions, and bank account annihilated by nature and the powers that be. Gracey can shred his git-fiddle like a rabid feral cat on the arm of a cheap second-hand couch tossed into the dumpster to be reclaimed by mother landfill. Though the critics loved him—they all said he was either way too far ahead of the times or way too far behind—he never caught on with the people of New Orleans and was already on his last dime before Katrina’s landfall. Now that he’s back in the Valley of Keene he is continuing with his family’s rice farm, his main source of subsistence, and he continues to hone his craft on his back porch and in any local dive that will have him. You can catch him for free most nights out in the boggy swamps or on the cheap at bars like Gunther’s, 3 Sisters Pub, or the Devil’s Outhouse.

Imagine the sound of a chorus of bullfrogs, tree frogs, crickets, owls, and cougars all wailing in harmonious lament to the tune of a shared nightmare of mother earth dying then twist that around a crying angel and you might come close to approximating Gracey’s sound. And don’t even get us started on the haunting performances he enacts (words can’t do it justice, but be warned you will not soon forget it). He is a one man force of nature. We here at Thursday City News just hope that one day he finds an audience outside the swamp and the critics.