Five years ago, The Lonesome Rose opened at the southern end of the St. Mary’s Strip with a new concept for the landmark entertainment district: a honky-tonk hosting live bands from San Antonio, Austin and beyond.

Local country musician Garrett T. Capps is part of the team that opened the bar and kept it running through the COVID-19 pandemic. Performing solo and with the band NASA Country, he could see how San Antonio needed a honky tonk.

“We’ve become a roadstop for lots of bands — rockabilly, alt-country, singer-songwriter,” he said. “We’ve definitely become one of the only music venues of this size for any style. I’m sure that will change one day. There aren’t a lot of clubs booking original music, local and national, every week. It’s like us, Paper Tiger, Sam’s Burger Joint.”

With his background as a performer — he and NASA Country recently finished a tour through the Netherlands and Belgium — Capps helps fill the stage with acts from across Texas and the nation. In December, the bar is hosting Texas mainstays Wayne “The Train” Hancock and Santiago Jimenez Jr. as well as the Nashville band Thelma and the Sleaze. Notables such as Charley Crockett, Flaco Jimenez and Augie Meyers have all come through.

Capps and NASA Country have pushed the boundaries of country music with influences from far-out sources such as Krautrock, the rock movement that sprung up in Germany in the ‘60s and ‘70s, spawning bands such as Neu! and Kraftwerk. Their most recent LP, People are Beautiful, was released last year; the band describes its sound as “dialing in to an alien wavelength, trans-dimensional frequency hiss.”

Capps recently sat with the Express-News to discuss his recent European tour, how to make a living as a country musician in 2023 and the secret to keeping a bar open on the St. Mary’s Strip. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: Tell me the story of how Lonesome Rose came about.

A: My friend Daniel and I, we were starting to book shows for my band and getting a little bit more integrated with booking bands from out of town in this kind of alternative-country world. I was going to Austin. But there was this underdog mentality with booking bands here and I think that’s a consistent thing. It’s like, “Why are bands not coming to San Antonio?” The answer can be really obvious sometimes, but I think that motivated me and Dan to start booking bands at Lowcountry and some other places. We threw some big shows that Paper Tiger. When we heard that the other potential future partners were starting to think of opening a Texas dive bar honky-tonk place, I latched on to it. It’s like, we absolutely need a venue for this stuff. I need a venue for my band! There still isn’t an place in town that I feel comfortable; this is the place!

Q: What led you to go into music?

A: It’s just the only thing I ever cared about. When I discovered the singer-songwriter thing from Texas — Steve Earle, Todd Snider, Guy Clark. I went to school in San Marcos and I got really into another big band, the Drive-By Truckers. They were a big gateway band for me. Something about singing and playing guitar and not having to have some voice from American Idol — just simple chords, expressive lyrics and your voice can be your voice. Like Bob Dylan or whatever. That just changed my life.

Q: You just got back from touring in the Netherlands and Belgium. How did it go?

A: It was awesome. It’s like a normal thing at this point. When I first caught a break in the Netherlands, I didn’t understand it completely. I understand it a lot more now. It’s like Doug Sahm and those guys, Augie Meyers and Flaco (Jiménez) — they’ve gone over there. There’s been this kind of fanatical fan base for niche American music over there.

Within that world of American Texas music fans, there’s people that are laser-sharp towards the next step in progression for country music. That album, In the Shadows (Again), in 2018, it somehow was like a cocktail of the Tex-Mex fans and the people looking for the next cosmic progression. It just was dumb luck that I found fans there. I’ve been on tour there three times and done a few fly-ins.

Q: I read that you and your band incorporated the Krautrock sound into your most recent record.

A: Yeah. Space country stuff, I love all that. But the guys that I work with, the NASA Country Band, some of them are really into that. When I write songs, sometimes they’re deliberately like, this is gonna have the motoric beat, but a lot of them are still the same: “Oh, I just want to be like Robert Earl Keen.” And then they turn them into more far-out stuff. I still just love singer-songwriter stuff, or rock and roll, but when we go on tour it’s like we only listen to free jazz and ambient music and stuff. So I’m always learning from them.

Q: When you blend traditional country with something like Krautrock, very different, what do you get out of that?

A: I think that the NASA Country scenario, and my career in general, all focuses around my interpretation of the Texas songwriter thing. The mixing of Krautrock or ambient sounds, at this point it just feels really normal. But if I can take a step back and and realize what we’re doing, it feels singular and completely unique. I’m always trying to write songs that I think will be timeless, but I think that the musical part of it is always elevated by the free spirit and the open-minded perspective that the people in NASA Country have.

Q: The name of the band, NASA Country, hints at Texas’s more modern qualities.

A: I forgot how the name came up. It’s just one of those dumb rock band things. But it’s stuck, so. Right now, on Bandcamp, one thing we have gotten really into that I’ve really enjoyed is we’re always recording these soundcheck jams or our practice room jams. So I’m posting those every Friday. It’s fun looking back at them, because some of them have turned into actual songs. Some of them are just like moments in time. It’s fun just making music in the moment.

Q: What’s it like being a working musician these days? You mentioned Bandcamp — I imagine that’s part of how you support yourself, along with touring.

A: The touring thing, especially after the pandemic kind of shut everything down — I mean, my entire world is wrapped around live music. The rush from getting an offer to play a show or packing up the van. With that being gone, with no beginning in sight, was just insane. But I think the live music industry has come back in a really insane way. It seems like more than ever, everything’s more extreme; you gotta work harder for less money. There’s a really big divide between the acts that are drawing thousands of people and making real money, and acts that are drawing hundreds of people. It’s very difficult to actually make a respectable wage making original music and trying to chase the dream on the road. If you stay in town or go play in Austin or some city that has a really busy musical working climate, you can do that. But if you’re trying to chase the big stage dream, I would say getting creative is the only option. And that’s nothing new.

For me, it’s all synergistic. (Lonesome Rose) and writing songs and touring and everything else. It’s just my life. There isn’t one sole source of income — it’s all wrapped together.

Q: Going back to Bandcamp, is it easy to get people to pay for music these days?

A: People love vinyl. People love shirts. Depending on the market, people like CDs. It all makes a difference. The profit margin on vinyl is pretty good if you buy 500 and sell 300 right off the gate.

Q: As a working musician, I imagine you help determine which bands will play here at Lonesome Rose.

A: Yeah, that’s my thing. I’m passionate about booking bands. Sometimes I don’t know why. It’s fun.

Q: Did the construction work on St. Mary’s impact your business?

A: For sure. It didn’t really reach us the way it did businesses further north. We’re kind of a little outside of the super-busy part, and we’re doing something way different than most other places on the Strip. But definitely.

Q: The St. Mary’s Strip has seen lots of places open and close over the years. What’s the secret for sticking around?

A: It’s a really solid team. Everyone’s got their specialty and everyone’s involved in other projects. And just having a really good awareness of what’s happening in their respective zones. Like, what’s happening in the San Antonio bar scene, or what’s happening with the staff behind the bar or what’s happening in the music scene in and out of town. It’s definitely been a headache dealing with lots of stuff the last few years, especially closing down for nine months (during the pandemic).

Q: What are your thoughts on the local music scene? Especially compared with that of Austin?

A: The relationship between San Antonio and Austin — I mean, that is like the whole thing. When the hippie country thing with Doug Sahm and Willie Nelson started in the 70s, that changed the world of country music forever. But it also overshadowed San Antonio’s music scene, like, forever. Like, it’s still overshadowed. I don’t even know if that’s the word for it. Bands from Austin, or not from Austin, they drive there and then the entire nutritional value of a good gig is there — good turnout, money, fun. The venues are professional. It’s just a live music city with lots of fans. San Antonio is definitely more down-home. There aren’t as many fans that are just out and about every night, I would say. It’s changing, though. A lot of the shows that we have here — like tonight, some of these acts are from New Orleans; one of them’s from Austin. And it’s sold way more tickets than I expected.