Shakey Graves (Alejandro Rose-Garcia), courtesy.

It’s been an unusual day for Alejandro Rose-Garcia. The artist, better known as Shakey Graves, meant to sit down to write out song descriptions for his new album, Movie of the Week, that would be sent to reviewers. But that activity turned an eight-page screenplay, detailing a movie that doesn’t exist. And all that came after he wrote some of these songs for a film that didn’t actually need them. If it all sounds a bit confusing, hold on a minute.

“I didn’t think I was going to write a script today and now I’m almost done,” Rose-Garcia said in a call from his home in Austin. “This is cracking me up right now.”

The earliest seeds of Rose-Garcia’s latest album were actually planted with an actual film project. A friend asked him to score a movie he was producing. Though Rose-Garcia has acted on screen before, the intersection of music and film was more uncharted territory for him. Still, he dove headfirst into writing music about the situations, characters, and storylines of the film.

“I kinda went above and beyond without really checking, so I was putting in all this work without getting paid, but I was excited,” Rose-Garcia said. “But when I turned it in they said it was a bit too moody. Basically, I went too far when all they wanted to do was license some of my songs.”

The silver lining was that Rose-Garcia was able to bring some of the melodies and song ideas, as well as the overall approach, out of that session to the next Shakey Graves project.

“At that point, I called up my friends and some of my favorite musicians and asked if they wanted to record a soundtrack for a movie that doesn’t exist,” said the artist, who’ll also perform at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park later this month.

Alejandro Rose-Garcia outfitted a studio with stations so anyone could record anything at any time without needing to set up and tear down. He also rented a Denton, Tex. home for everyone to live in while working.

“It was kind of like this soulless Texas house that we all stayed in at night,” he said. “We would have movie nights every night; good movies, bad movies. I think we watched “Man in the Iron Mask” three times on accident because it kept coming up on Starz.”

The recording took place at the height of the pandemic and the only goal was to keep moving.

“Afterwords I took all these big sessions back and listened through as though I was making a documentary,” he said. “I was listen to all the ‘footage’ and figuring out where there were songs.”

The results was bountiful and Movie of the Week is just a first taste of what he’s got from those sessions. The only thing missing was the lyrics, which came last. Rose-Garcia says one of his favorite parts of creating music is the interpretive nature of the lyrics, the overall feel of a track and how it can vary widely depending on the listener.

“My writing process is kind of mumbling things or just getting phrases,” he said. “Some songs we recorded with vocals but many I did in post.”

With Shakey Graves just days away from releasing the album, he’s decided he wants to turn the album into a movie—for real. He wants to direct himself, and he wants to do it before he turns 40. The clock is ticking, but over the course of this 20-minute conversation, it was clear that his gears were turning about next steps.

“As I usually find when you put stuff out into the universe, you have to be really specific about what you’re wishing for,” he said.

Follow writer Mike DeWald at Twitter.com/mike_dewald.