Despite a request for the audience to silence their devices, a woman's phone went off during Gavin DeGraw's recent appearance in New York City. The GRAMMY-nominated singer/songwriter was discussing how he observes people's everyday behavior for creative inspiration, when the thin strains of an R&B song emitted from the small crowd — eliciting pause from DeGraw.
"Is that 'Watch Me Work'?" DeGraw asked, referring to the sultry 2014 jam by Tinashe. "Wait until you hear the song I write about this!" (The audience erupted with laughter.) Whether or not that was the song in question, or if it'll ever flow from DeGraw's pen, we were all essentially watching him work. And across an hour and a half at the Greene Space in SoHo, it was abundantly clear why his pure-and-simple songcraft has touched so many for so long.
Billed "A New York Evening With Gavin DeGraw," the evening comprised a conversation with Jason Emmens, the Chief Curator and Vice President of Curatorial Affairs at the GRAMMY Museum — as well as a brief audience Q&A and a four-song performance. The event not only followed the format of its predecessor earlier this year, with Jon Batiste; thanks to DeGraw's effusive humor, charisma and musicality, it matched it in terms of charm and audience appeal.
Backstage before the gig — with his adorable rescue dog, Buddy, curled up beside him — DeGraw described his history with the Recording Academy, and what the audience was in for on that summer evening. "I've been meeting folks related to GRAMMY world since I started, so that would be a million years ago — right after they found some of the first human fossils," he joked to RecordingAcademy.com.
As he described it, he and his associates simply started dropping by the offices — and hit it off with its occupants. "You see [these] people are real music lovers, and they love the music culture," he added. "We all feel like music is part of one of those great, common fabrics of society."
Ten years after he slugged out hits like 2003's "I Don't Want to Be" — which became the theme song to coming-of-age TV classic "One Tree Hill" — he won his first GRAMMY for Best Song Written For Visual Media, for his featured spot on Colbie Caillat's "We Both Know." (That one was for the 2013 flick Safe Haven.)
*Gavin DeGraw. Photo: Rob Kim/Getty Images for The Recording Academy*
Fast forward to 2022, and DeGraw has appeared twice for GRAMMY Museum-related events — one at the actual Museum a few months back, and now, at the Greene Space — where live broadcasts and tapings for local stations WNYC and WQXR. He's promoting this year's album, Face the River, which deals chiefly with grief for his late parents — sort of.
"Some of it's grief, but a lot of it is really a celebration of the people who influenced me and gave me a perspective on life and love," DeGraw clarified. "I was fortunate to have a really cool example, regarding seeing parents who wanted to be in each other's presence and were dedicated to creating a good life for their kids. What they didn't have in money, they had in sweat equity instead."
"Sweat equity" figured heavily in DeGraw's ensuing conversation with Emmens. When it comes to public speaking, energy feedback can be stymied when an ocean of N95ed faces is staring back at you; DeGraw is too seasoned to let that trip him up. (Or a distraction by way of "Watch Me Work," but we digress.)
With an impish grin and a folksy, boy-next-door demeanor that belied keen wit and determination, DeGraw handled the conversation with the peaks and valleys of a great setlist. He got emotional talking about his late parents, and how his somewhat unflappable father — who instilled in DeGraw his MO of "outworking everybody" — was visibly moved by a lyric from Face the River's "Freedom": "Nobody leaving this planet alive."
But the heaviness was gracefully counterweighted by belly laughs, like when DeGraw described driving with friends to a fistfight to Wu-Tang Clan and politely asking if they could listen to the Beatles instead. Or taking an audience request for "Just Friends," a deep cut from 2003's Chariot, and summarily airballing the chords and the words, only to abort midway through — all with characteristically good humor.
There was no charming crashing and burning during the set proper, though. Accompanied by an acoustic guitarist and drummer, DeGraw performed "Freedom," "Ford," and "Greatest of All Time" from Face the River — which sounded phenomenal, despite DeGraw's self-deprecating jabs.
"If anyone has any videos on their phone of me not doing a song correctly, if you can please delete all that," he requested, tongue firmly in cheek — with the alternative of "sending it to the foreign-film section of Netflix" for doctoring and overdubbing. But if he missed a passing chord or two in the new tunes, he knew "I Don't Want to Be" — the song that "paid off all my college loans" — like the back of his hand.
Even then, DeGraw still couldn't resist poking fun at himself, as is his wont. "I wrote this song when I was angry and broke, and then a man called me," he grinningly recalled. "He said, 'I want to put you on TV. But not your face. Your voice sounds like a model, but you don't look like a model.'"
Needless to say, the attendees wholly loved hearing and seeing McGraw, who reminded everyone why Clive Davis saw fit to sign him in the first place. And almost 20 years later, with his way with a piano, a pen and a crowd only sharpened with time, what a pleasure it was to watch him work.
