Born at the crossroads. Buried nothing.
They say Leroy Graves came up in the back rooms of Shotgun Alley, where the bourbon ran cheaper than the rent and the radio never stopped bleeding the blues. His mother sang for tips down at Red's. His father was a rumor — a six-string and a one-way ticket north. At eight he built a guitar from a cigar box and a length of wire. By twelve he was working the street corners for whatever the night cared to give him.
In 1986 the State of Mississippi handed him six years at Parchman Farm. He went in a hothead and came out a singer — taught the slide by a blind man named Earl, and taught the truth by everybody else. He wrote his first real songs behind that steel, and he has never set them down since.
For thirty years he ran from his own ghost down every back highway in the South. Then one grey morning he turned around and looked it dead in the eye. He has been singing to it ever since.