Shakey Graves performs at the Athletic Club of Bend on a chilly Sunday evening.

In last week’s GO! Magazine, I urged people interested in seeing Austin, Texas, Americana artist Shakey Graves at the Athletic Club of Bend to show up in time to catch opener Sierra Ferrell, a wonderful singer-songwriter from West Virginia with a throwback country sound.

So when Sunday’s concert rolled around, I followed my own advice and got to the venue at showtime — 6:30 p.m., according to my ticket and clearsummernights.com, the online home of the concert series at the Athletic Club.

I was surprised to hear Ferrell already singing, so I hurried in and beelined to the stage area just in time to see her and her four-piece acoustic band wrap up “The Sea,” a lovely, leisurely swing-jazz tune that opens her excellent new album “Long Time Coming.” Then, Ferrell commented on the chilly weather — it was 43 degrees at the time — and announced that she had one more song for us.

I was bummed. I’m not sure why she started well before the listed showtime, but I felt shortchanged, and I think she was shortchanged, too. There’s no telling how many people still waiting in line to enter might’ve found a new favorite if they’d had a chance to see her.

My spirits were soon lifted, however, by Shakey Graves (real name: Alejandro Rose-Garcia), who was terrific, especially when his full band was on stage behind him. At 7 p.m., Rose-Garcia hit the stage alone, guitar in hand, as a phalanx of bearded men and women in thrift-store ‘fits flocked to the stage like moths to a flame. He started off with a rumbling take on a couple of songs — “Unlucky Skin” and the title track — from the album that made him semi-famous, “Roll the Bones,” which came out 10 years ago and is currently the subject of an elaborate reissue campaign. He then slithered through another tune or two before sneaking into a cover of the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” during which he tried to provoke an audience sing-along. Alas, it seemed most people didn’t know it, and the response was weak.

A lot of artists take some time during a show to play a few solo songs and give their band a break. Presumably, Rose-Garcia does it because that’s how he started his career: as a lo-fi studio wizard and DIY one-man band. So it makes sense — especially during a year of “Roll the Bones” remembrance — to start the set off that way. But the energy in the venue noticeably picked up when he was joined by the rest of his band for some of the catchiest songs in his catalog. There was the thick, rubbery low end and emphatic “oh ohs!” of “Family and Genus” and the breathy, twinkling soul number “Counting Sheep” and “Dearly Departed,” a percussive twang-pop tune that drew a big reaction from the crowd and sent Rose-Garcia into a gravel-throated scream, which he employed several times throughout the evening.

Elsewhere, the band stomped through the swaggering chorus of “Kids These Days” and poured syrupy synthesizer tones all over “Look Alive,” which is Shakey at his most psychedelic. A cover of Neil Young’s gorgeous ode to wandering and love, “Unknown Legend,” was a perfect fit, both in terms of Shakey Graves’ sound and Rose-Garcia’s willingness to push beyond the boundaries of Americana music.

The show sagged in the middle because the band exited, leaving Rose-Garcia to do a few more by himself. He then proceeded to meander through “Tomorrow” and “Late July” and “Mansion Door,” whose strummy guitar chords so clearly echo “Where Is My Mind,” I thought he was reprising his earlier cover. Somewhere in this solo excursion, the show lost most of its momentum, and it was a slog to get to the encore. Rose-Garcia is charismatic and talented and very good as a solo act, but once we got a heaping dose of the full band, he should’ve stuck with them all the way.

Fortunately, they came back out for the encore and absolutely tore through “The Perfect Parts,” a serrated blues-rock jam from Shakey Graves’ 2014 album “And The War Came.” Whoever controlled the light show did a consistently great job all night, and they cranked it up to “sensory overload” just as the band rocked its hardest, bringing the show to a peak at exactly the right time. If only it had started that way.