Velvet Backdrop, Raw Soul

Grayson Capps & The Ground Zero Experience

Photography By MCE Photography/Chad Edwards

The Ground Zero Blues Club in Biloxi, Mississippi, carries its own current. Neon light spills across the velvet backdrop, shadows sway like dancers, and a low hum lingers before the first note is struck. The crowd leans forward, restless, waiting to be swept into the music.

When Grayson Capps steps on stage — long hair pulled back, guitar slung low, harmonica ready at his side — his presence draws you in. After a few songs, he lets his hair down, loosening up with the room, and that’s when the show truly hits its stride. The songs stretch longer, his movements grow freer, and the band behind him builds the energy higher.

From the start, it’s clear Grayson isn’t just here to play songs. He’s here to bring people together. In a world where so much time is lost to phones and scrolling, he creates a space where strangers become neighbors — laughing, singing, and finding joy in the same rhythm.

Raw and unfiltered, Grayson doesn’t hide. He lays himself bare. One moment, he’s center stage, trading verses between guitar and harmonica. The next, he’s stretched out flat on the floor, guitar pressed to his chest, eyes closed, lost in the sound. He hasn’t stumbled or fallen — he’s simply gone where the music takes him. It’s a refreshing state of vulnerability.

When he leans into Columbus Stockade Blues, a song his father and his father’s friends taught him as a boy, the mood shifts. It’s not just another tune on the setlist — it’s a piece of his story.

He sings it with reverent grit, and you can feel the generational spirit humming through the room. This electricity moves through the crowd, carrying voices, claps, and nods until everyone is swept up in the same vibrations.

Grayson shares the stage with a band that plays with one heartbeat — Corky Hughes bending the strings, Russ Broussard anchoring the beat on drums, Susan Cowsill pouring soul into the vocals, and Rufus Ducote steadying it all with a low bass groove. Together, they create a sound that swells and settles like waves on the Gulf, layering strings, drums, and vocals into something bigger than any singular voice. It isn’t background to Grayson’s stories, but a shared pulse. Every player adds a unique rhythm to the evening’s pulse.

Chad Edwards, who wears many hats for Grayson and the band, is the supportive foundation. He’s their tour manager, sometimes their booker, their photographer, and the one who curates their story through social media. His touch can be felt in every detail — in the rhythm of the tour, in the images that capture the rawness of a performance, and in the way their music reaches people far beyond the stage.

That influence even stretches into the creative process. Their latest record, Heartbreak, Misery & Death, finds its name in a late-night moment with Grayson, Corky, and Chad listening back to the songs. Each track carries a heavy thread of grit, loss, and longing. Together, they land on a title that speaks the truth of what they hear. It sticks because it fits — simple, soulful, and real.

The name may sound heavy, but the songs don’t sink you. They lift you. The blues have always been about taking sorrow and turning it into something that frees you — and this album does just that.

All of it comes alive at Ground Zero Blues Club. The Biloxi location is the Gulf Coast’s sister to the original in Clarksdale — co-owned by Morgan Freeman, who envisioned a place where anyone could walk in and experience the blues up close. That vision breathes here in Biloxi. The neon hum, the deep red backdrop, and the kind of sound that wraps around you instead of merely filling the room make it one of Grayson’s favorite places to play. You feel it in every chord: this isn’t just a show — it’s communion.

Early in our interview, Grayson tells me, “Performing, to me, is like psychotherapy 101. It’s cathartic, and it only works because you have a whole ton of people experiencing the same thing at the same time. And it’s unlike anything you can through a phone.”

That last line stays with me. Because that’s what the evening is — not just a concert, but a reminder that music can reset us. In a world where it’s too easy to disappear into screens and endless scrolling, Grayson Capps channels a current that grounds us in the present — side by side, laughing, singing, and sharing something real.

Carried by that current of music and artistry, he creates a night that brings everyone together. It’s raw, it’s soulful, and it lingers long after the lights go down.

LEARN MORE ABOUT GRAYSON CAPPS AND TOUR DATES:
www.graysoncapps.com. Follow on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.