Alejandro Escovedo
2009-09-12
Bloodshot Records Hideout Block Party
Chicago, IL

Setlist:

- Always a Friend
- Everybody Loves Me
- This Bed Is Getting Crowded
- 5. Sister Lost Soul
- I Was Drunk
- Chelsea Hotel ‘78
- Castenets
- Real As An Animal

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A hot night in early September was the exception, as singer/songwriter Alejandro Escovedo returned to Salt Lake. He performed for a small (but still over capacity) crowd of adoring fans.
Not a one thought they�d ever have a chance to see him play again, at least not without making the pilgrimage to his home base of Austin, Texas. And even then, it seemed unlikely that he would ever rock like he once had.
During a Tucson, Ariz., performance in 2003, Escovedo collapsed on stage.  The near-killer turned out to be advanced Hepatitis C.
Since that almost fatal crisis, Escovedo has embraced both Eastern and Western medicine in his search for relief.
�I feel great right now,� said Escovedo, speaking from his home in the Texas Hill Country. �As far as the health thing is concerned, I think I am in good hands. I found a Tibetan doctor in L.A., and so I�ve been taking Tibetan medicine for a couple of years now.
�Don�t get me wrong—when I was in an emergency state, like I was in Arizona, Western medicine was the only way to go. It gave me time to figure out how to deal with this long term.�
Escovedo began to research alternative cures after again nearly dying from side effects of the interferon treatments related to the illness. The Eastern treatments/lifestyle change for the once hard-partying Texas rocker enabled him to do what everyone thought was part of his past � traveling more miles than money, as once he said in song, to make music both splendid and mysterious.
Strings that rock

The Western tour is in support of Escovedo�s CD, The Boxing Mirror, which came out to abundant praise in May 2006.
With everything from gentle ballads to dense, fiery rockers, the CD well demonstrates Escovedo and band (road group included drummer Hector Mu�oz, bassist Mark Andes, guitarist David Pulkingham, cellist Matt Fish, Bruce Salmon, piano) are at the top of their game.
�Break This Time,� the song with which he closed the fierce Salt Lake performance, is a clear standout on an album that�s strong from start to finish. The aggressive melody of the tune matches Escovedo�s lyrics for complexity � driving drums, feral guitars, with all of the above drenched in cello-driven rock �n� roll.
Cello? No doubt, if Escovedo is involved. Strings that move deep and hard, sometimes almost below the level of consciousness, have been his trademark for almost 20 years.
�I never wanted hippie-ish strings, sweet strings,� said Escovedo. �I wanted them to be aggressive and as loud as the guitars were. That mid-range to bottom-level tone gets in there with the guitar sound, and … it gives it a real powerful feel, like one big, huge riff. Like Wagner uses strings, really deeply and powerfully? To do a rock �n� roll thing with them, we had to have strings in that same category.�
Born in Texas, reared in California, Escovedo has scores of cousins, siblings and nieces and nephews in the music business. To name but a few Escovedo family successes, brothers Pete and Coke were seminal members of Santana�s glory years. Niece Sheila E., daughter of Coke, was the evening-gowned, glove-sporting Prince percussion prot�g�.
�My father came to this country and worked hard, worked however he had to.  And out of 12 children, I think with eight of us have been professional musicians at one time or another,� Escovedo said. �We have contributed artistically, as well as other ways, to this nation.�
Escovedo is clearly deeply indebted to both father Pedro, and mother Evita, for inspiring the kids to play. He has paid tribute to Pedro in many songs, with most recently assembled into a stage production, �By the Hand of the Father.�
�Evita�s Lullaby,� a song from the new album, is meant for his mother.
�They were almost like one person, my parents. � They gave us everything we needed to make our lives complete,� said Escovedo. �My mom bought us every record we asked for. When The Beatles came on TV, we watched them as a family. And really, they took part in this because they knew we liked it.  Dad would make fun of it all in a loving way.�
Fame�s near-misses
Escovedo has headed up many an almost-famous cult band � punkers The Nuns, cowpunkers Rank & File, and perhaps his best lineup yet in The True Believers, or �Troobs,� as they were affectionately known.
The band featured the writing and guitars of brother Javier Escovedo and Jon Dee Graham, a Texas songsmith of great reputation in his own right. Graham�s thundering guitar licks are featured once more alongside Escovedo�s on The Boxing Mirror.
The densely rocking Troobs made waves across America, often opening for Los Lobos in the mid-�80s. The future looked sterling. Then EMI dropped the band before its second album came out.
�A month away from being announced as a release, and poof,� said Escovedo.  �It was a heartbreak story. But some of us learned from it, others fell to the wayside.
�My brother was hit really hard by it, and Jon Dee, too. And it is a drag—you should hear my brother�s album they just won�t release. He was a much more accomplished songwriter than I was then.�
Escovedo sighed. �Those experiences are odd. When you get the wind knocked out of you, some recover and some don�t. But I kept going.�
Velvet touch
Perhaps no one had greater influence on a youthful Escovedo than The Velvet Underground. Escovedo credits his love of hot strings to the band�s John Cale and his use of electrically amplified viola drones.
To Escovedo�s delight, he asked Cale to produce the new record, and Cale agreed.
The end result is decidedly modern, but also echoes the thick production of earlier, almost Drifters-like sound.
�When I was listening to the record as we were making it, I would hear these old lines, these old tones. I told John it is like a Phil Spector record, which was just great for me.�
Though thrilled to work with Cale, Escovedo confessed to a few nervous moments, especially when he brought in �Break This Time� to record.
�The song is basically �I�m Waiting for My Man,� � admitted Escovedo, citing one of the Underground�s classics. �And in the back of my head, I kind of always knew that, but it had never bothered me before because, really, what are any of us doing but rewriting Chuck Berry, anyway?
�But then when I was sitting with John right there, I got this kind of pang, thinking, �This is really absurd to be even thinking of doing this!� But John was really sweet about it. He dug it.
�And I love the way he put that cello on there, like an AC/DC thing vibrating throughout the whole song? The drone! That�s why John was so great for the record, because he is so much about sounds and texture.�
Escovedo chuckled. �Oh, I know that is overused, sounds and textures, but man. He is all about not what you play, but how it sounded. If he has to throw stones at the strings, whatever, he�d do it, to get that sound. It was great to witness because I don�t hear things like that, but love the end results.�
No choice
In 1992, Escovedo was hailed by the Austin Music Awards as Musician of the Year. At the close of the 1990s, the influential Americana magazine, No Depression, named him Artist of the Decade.
And when medical bills got enormous, help came from stars like Lucinda Williams, The Jayhawks, and Son Volt. They recorded the collection, Por Vida: Songs of Alejandro Escovedo (2003), which brought more attention to the songwriter�s body of work.
�It was an honor. To have those people, those friends, do such wonderful versions of my songs, to help, it�s hard to put into words how great that was,� he said.
In the end, the accolades heaped on Escovedo by his contemporaries, fans and critics perhaps has as much to do with his position as the Austin scene�s most cryptic and purely poetic songwriter as it does his unique sound. He admits that his elusive wordplay is intentional.
I remember growing up with rock �n� roll radio under my pillow, with music, sounds and voices that came out of the darkness, without a face,� he said.  �I didn�t have any real visual aids to lead me in any direction. It was up to me and my imagination what the song was. I became part of the song. I like to be part of something I have to work at, whether it�s a movie or a song or a book. I like to think my audience likes to think a little.�
As for retiring, for health reasons or otherwise, Escovedo talks like an artist who has lost too much time already.
�I have no choice in this matter,� he said. �I�ve got to keep going, regardless. Maybe it is a cultural thing. I am like an old Mexican boxer who just can�t quit. Those guys, you�re going to have to kill them to stop them.  And that�s me, too.�
Linda East Brady is a music journalist, fiction writer and radio host. She is the music feature writer for the Ogden Standard-Examiner, and hosts �Tuesday Roots �n Blues,� an eclectic mix of Americana and other foundation music for Radio Free Utah, KRCL FM. Her fiction and profiles, reviews and commentary have appears on and in HHGI Online Guitar Magazine, Blue Suede News, Mid-South Literary Review and other respected publications. Brady�s Austin blues scene-set novel, �Lone Star Ice & Fire,� was published by Coral Press in 2004. Her second novel, �The Pedigree Blues,� which follows a political singer/songwriter in the months before the 2004 presidential election, is expected out before the 2008 election if the creek don�t rise too