Signs of Life 2008: Best Music
Cory Chisel & The Wandering Sons - "Tennessee"
Killers album on MySpace for free, this weekend only
Live at Paste: Duncan Sheik
Rock needs its veterans, if only to keep this latest generation of blog-entitled bands in check. Much as he has since his Nuns/Rank and File/True Believers days, Alejandro Escovedo continues to grit out a career on record and on the road, Hepatitis C be damned. Dude's a throwback in every sense of the word, the kind of guitar-slingin' professor that the kids ought to take notes from.
Saturday, August 23rd
We received a call out of the blue asking if we'd like to play the DNC on Tuesday—the night Hillary Clinton is to speak. The word was that they had fallen in love with the song "People" off of Real Animal, and that it really emphasized the message of the night. Turns out that the talent producer of the event is a fan of my music, and she came across the song and thought it was perfect for the tone of the night. I thought any opportunity to play against the Republicans was a great one.
Texas troubadour creates glam-punk-country opus
Alejandro Escovedo isn’t just a musician’s musician, a label that typically signifies high critical esteem and low sales. Rather, he’s a troubadour’s troubadour, plugging away for 30 years with a smattering of admiring fans, the respect of his colleagues, and a handful of critics wondering why he hasn’t received the Kennedy Center Honors. Born into a musical family that includes brothers Pete and Coke as well as niece Sheila E., Alejandro cut his teeth in San Francisco’s punk forerunners the Nuns during the late 1970s, before forming two semi-legendary proto-alt.country acts in the 1980s: first Rank and File and then the True Believers (with his brother Javier and Jon Dee Graham). His glam side project, Buick McKane (named after a T. Rex song), released a single, well-regarded album in the mid 1990s, compiling nearly five years of recordings. However, with seven albums under his own name, he is perhaps most revered as a solo artist, so much so that in the 1990s, alt.country bible No Depression named him artist of the decade two years before the decade was even over.
Alejandro Escovedo is a determined man. Just four years ago, he arrived in an Arizona emergency room vomiting blood, and was told that he didn't have much time left to live. His years of hard drinking had finally caught up with him, and he had contracted hepatitis C.
Although he's yet to cross into his sixth decade, it seems like Alejandro Escovedo has lived enough life to fill a century of lyric booklets. After a harrowing battle with Hepatitis C left him vomiting blood at the side of the stage in Arizona, the Austin-based musician gave up the rock-star lifestyle and delved into his near-death experience on 2006's brooding, John Cale-produced, critically-acclaimed album The Boxing Mirror. Escovedo's ninth solo offering, Real Animal, which hits record store shelves today (June 24), chronicles the glory days of Escovedo's colorful journey, starting when he was a young California punk enraptured by glam rock and continuing through to when he settled down in Texas and began his solo career. In a neat turn of events, Real Animal was produced by the man who helmed so many of Escovedo's favorite records, the legendary Tony Visconti (T. Rex, Bowie, Morrissey, to name just a few). Paste caught up with Escovedo on the eve of South By Southwest, where he was preparing to perform Real Animal in its entirety with cowriter Chuck Prophet.
Something truly magical happened on Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band’s Magic Tour: On April 14 in Houston, Alejandro Escovedo, seemingly big on collaborations lately, joined The Boss on stage in front of a sold out crowd.
The gruff-voiced, smiling duo played “Always a Friend,” a song from Escovedo’s upcoming Real Animal, which will be released on June 24.
According to Escovedo’s website, Springsteen introduced him by saying, “He’s been putting out good music for so long,” and saying his new album was, “one of the best he’s ever made.” Escovedo said of the performance, “It was my best musical experience, ever.”
Both Escovedo and Springsteen are long-time, well-loved names in the music industry, with careers that speak volumes about redemption, reinvention and resurrection.
They look like they’ve always been friends:
Related links:
Review: Bruce Springsteen - Magic
Feature: Alejandro Escovedo – More Miles Ahead
BruceSpringsteen.net
Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.
UPDATE: Alejandro Escovedo's publicist says that "this is not a tribute album to Iggy Pop nor does the title refer Iggy." Additionally, Glyn Johns did not back out.
A pop-culture fanatic out there has surely shared with you at some point the theory of six degrees of separation. The theory, to put it simply, asserts that all human beings are connected socially by six steps or less, and furthermore, that Kevin Bacon sits at the center of this social universe.
Skeptical? We were too, until we realized the mind-boggling implications of the musical net cast by one of Austin’s favorite songwriters and performers, Alejandro Escovedo, while recording his latest album. Complicated? Yes, but don’t worry – we’ve laid it out step by step.
1. Renowned Austin performer and songwriter Alejandro Escovedo will release his new album Real Animal June 24 on Back Porch Records.
2. He enlisted former Green on Red guitarist Chuck Prophet to help write and record the album. The pair also previewed some of the material live in Austin recently.
Real Animal is an autobiographical account of Escovedo’s life in music, beginning in San Francisco and touching on his time with Rank & File and True Believers.
3. The album is also heavily influenced, though, by Escovedo’s idol, snarling Stooges’ front man Iggy Pop. The album’s title track, in fact, is a tribute to him.
4. Veteran producer Tony Visconti, who has worked with musical heavyweights David Bowie and Morrissey, signed on to produce...
5. ...after original producer Glyn Johns backed out.
6. While he was working on the new album, Escovedo was also helping Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme write the score for his new Jimmy Carter documentary. Demme, in turn, is directing a documentary based on Escovedo’s life.
Never thought you’d see Escovedo, Prophet, Iggy, Visconti, Bowie, Morrissey and Demme in the same article? Well, chalk one up for Kevin Bacon. Maybe he’s onto something after all...
Related links:
AlejandroEscovedo.com
Chuck Prophet on New West Records
Paste: Alejandro Escovedo: More Miles Ahead
Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.
Back Porch Records announced that Alejandro Escovedo will be the subject of an upcoming documentary by Jonathan Demme. While Demme’s probably best known for his blockbuster successes during the '90s with the Oscar winning Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, some of his best films are performance-related, including last year’s Neil Young: Heart of Gold and Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia. Most prominent of these is Stop Making Sense, the revolutionary shoot of a Talking Heads performance filmed in 1983 that changed the landscape of concert filming and brought international fame to the Big Suit. If that doesn't sound interesting in writing, then you just don't know what I'm talking about—go out and rent the film today, as words really fail to capture the Big Suit's essence.
Escovedo’s performance will be at Las Manitas Mexican restaurant in Austin, Texas, which is scheduled for demolition soon afterwards. The movie will show Escovedo playing his full range of music, from garage-rock from some of his early days to an appearance by his string quintet.
For now, though, Escovedo has his eyes on future recordings and is returning to the Sunset Sound studio in LA for an album planned to be released in spring 2008. Until then, you can see Escovedo during his current tour supporting the 2006 release, The Boxing Mirror.
Dates:
August
16 - Los Angeles, Calif. @ The Mint
17 - San Francisco, Calif. @ Great American Music Hall
18 - Santa Barbara, Calif. @ Lobero Theatre
24 - Birmingham, Ala. @ Stokin the Fire
26 - Salt Lake City, Utah @ Red Butte Garden Amp.
September
7 - Louisville, Ken. @ Headliners Music Hall
8 - Bowling Green, Ohio @ Black Swamp Arts Festival
28 - Lexington, Ken. @ Christ the King Octoberfest
29 - Chicago, Ill. @ The Abbey Pub
Related links:
Paste on Alejandro Escovedo's support concert
AlejandroEscovedo.com
Jonathan Demme on IMDB
Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.
Click here to return to the issue 33 cover story home page.
When America’s most popular songwriter penned “Hard Times Come Again No More,” little did he know how hard his own times would become. When he died a decade later from a fever-induced fall, Stephen Foster had only 38 cents in his pocket.
And songwriters are still struggling. But today, they can turn to the Recording Academy’s MusiCares Fund, the Rhythm ’n’ Blues Foundation or other charities formed by musicians to help their own. If they live in Austin, Texas, they can tap the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians. Or fellow players might throw a benefit concert; they happen often in the Live Music Capital of the World.
When Austin-based artist Alejandro Escovedo’s Hepatitis C became life-threatening in 2003, friends and admirers—including John Cale, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle and bandmate Jon Dee Graham—clamored to participate in what became a double album (Por Vida: A Tribute to the Songs of Alejandro Escovedo). That outpouring of appreciation followed several spontaneously organized benefits around the country. Escovedo is still humbled by the experience. “Being sick and having the support of so many people … I’ve never seen anything like it in music,” he says.
Had Stephen Foster been a Hurricane Katrina victim, music-community support might’ve even helped him improve on his pre-flood existence. Funds raised by Louisiana native Marcia Ball bought a displaced fellow pianist a new keyboard; her friends found him more gigs than he ever had in New Orleans. Among the donors to her ad-hoc fund: longtime Letterman bandleader Paul Shaffer.
Another shining example of musicians taking care of each other was the effort to help Victoria Williams after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1992. Shawn Colvin, T Bone Burnett, Vic Chesnutt and others raised $20,000 and inspired the disc, Sweet Relief: A benefit for Victoria Williams. In turn, Williams later created the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund to aid other musicians. Another fundraising album, Sweet Relief II—Gravity of the Situation: The Songs of Vic Chesnutt, was released in 1996 as an homage to the brilliant singer/songwriter, who’s a paraplegic.
Denise Duffy, administrative director of the Durham, N.C.-based Music Maker Relief Foundation, says such generosity is inspired by two factors: “the emotional pull” music has on us, and the cutthroat, chew-’em-up-and-spit-’em-out American music business. In Europe, players get government subsidies and pensions; here, they’re on their own. “The other thing that’s difficult about being a musician is that because what you’re doing for work is what other people do for fun, they don’t necessarily think you’re working,” she says. “It’s hard to get people to take it seriously.”
Duffy’s husband, Tim, a folklorist, founded Music Maker in 1994 after encountering a far-too-steady stream of poverty-stricken musicians. Says board member and legendary blues, rock and soul artist Taj Mahal, “Rarely does indigenous African-American music have a safe haven and concerned effort for the well-being of great traditional artists.”
Most of these charities have age and financial restrictions. But, in addition to giving cash to older artists, Music Maker also helps rebuild their careers with income-producing performances and recordings, such as the eponymous June release by bluesman John Dee Holeman and Australian folk/blues band The Waifs.
“We have a unique approach of preserving the music by preserving the musician,” says Duffy. “Cootie Stark went from playing his local pizza joint in Greenville, S.C., for $50 to opening at the Newport R&B Festival for Aretha Franklin—in his 70s. It gives me hope.”
For more information visit Sweetrelief.org and MusicMaker.org.
You have to learn how to die if you want to be alive, okay?
Wilco, "War on War," 2002
Gonna learn how to give, not to simply get by/Or to barely hang on for the sake of goodbye.
Alejandro Escovedo, "Died a Little Today," 2006
It wasn’t so long ago that the notion of dying was more than a metaphorical turn of phrase to Alejandro Escovedo.
Infected with hepatitis C but maintaining the rock ‘n roll orthodoxy of the touring musician’s lifestyle he’d spent three decades perfecting (which is to say, drink and smoke first, reflect on the damage done later), the 55-year-old Austin singer/songwriter found himself vomiting blood one night after a performance in Tucson, Arizona.
In the hospital afterward, doctors informed him that he had advanced cirrhosis of the liver and tumors in his abdomen and esophagus, all of which were bleeding simultaneously due to the effects of hepatitis and the self-abuse wrought from years of tippin’ ‘em back in the bars where he plied his trade. For a guy who’d christened his albums with titles such as A Man Under the Influence and Bourbonitis Blues , being told "drink and you die" formed the kind of personal challenge that went right to the very heart of his identity: a choice that literally meant the difference between holding on for dear life or letting go the rope.
The long road back from the brink of oblivion – nearly three years’ worth of various treatments, including one year in which he was too weak to pick up a guitar at all while taking the debilitating therapy interferon – is documented on his first album in four years, The Boxing Mirror, (BackPorch/Virgin) whose songs formed the core around which Escovedo’s Aladdin Theater performance orbited.
The former X-rated movie palace (during the ’70s and ’80s, the Aladdin was evidently the number-one exhibitor of Deep Throat) is a venue long favored by Escovedo and his various touring bands – its intimate setting and super-tuned acoustics providing the perfect setting for his mix-‘n-match blend of straight-up roots rock, string-centric chamber pop and Tex-Mex requinto balladry – and one in which his fans could instantly bond with him, whether sitting feet from the stage or dancing with joyous abandon in the aisles, all of which combined to create an effect akin to watching a show put on for friends and family in the comfort of your living room.
Escovedo’s set was, by turns, tough and tender, with his touring band – including longtime road-hands Brian Standefer on cello and drummer Hector Muñoz, along with former Spirit/Canned Heat bassist Mark Andes, New Orleans keyboardist/tape manipulator Bruce Salmon and guitarist David Pulkingham – switching musical gears at the drop of a dime.
The quartet provided Escovedo’s work with some of the most versatile readings it has received in the past decade, toggling effortlessly between his beloved punk covers (a dark, menacing take on the Gun Club’s "Sex Beat" stood in for the usual ragged spin on the Stooges’ "I Wanna Be Your Dog,” which Escovedo claims has now been “retired on doctor’s orders"), the martial stomp of his latter-day material (new tracks such as "Dear Head on the Wall" stood proudly beside the old favorite "Castanets," with Escovedo adding the latter song back to his setlist after years of neglect when he learned via a New York Times article that the song was in rotation on President Bush’s iPod – "we were so disgusted, we’re taking it back again") and the quiet sophistication of ballads such as "Rosalie" and "Evita’s Lullaby," a song from The Boxing Mirror which Escovedo dedicated to "my mother, who was married to my father for more than sixty years before he passed, and is now looking forward to the day when she can reunite with him."
At times reminiscent of his old glam-rock aggregation Buick MacKane or his punk-country mashups Rank and File and the True Believers while, at others, a dead ringer for some of his acoustic "orchestra" projects, this group of musicians seems to intuitively understand Alejandro’s unique blend of Velvet Underground attitude and Townes Van Zandt aptitude, twisting the two approaches into a genre-free cocktail in which emotion and raw truth-telling count for everything and easy-bake labels are rendered meaningless.
Nowhere was this dynamic more evident than during the evening’s encore, when the nattily-attired Escovedo – who donned a mosaic-patterned vest and blinding white French-cuffed shirt for the occasion – led the group through a sparklingly sad version of Mott the Hoople’s "I Wish I Was Your Mother" (whose leader, Ian Hunter, was one of the many musicians who quietly contributed to Por Vida: The Songs of Alejandro Escovedo, a two-disc tribute set that generated thousands in proceeds used to offset the considerable medical and living costs Escovedo racked up during his three year recovery/hiatus) before segueing into a request for "Don’t Need You," a song with an opening refrain – "There’s heaven, then there’s somewhere else" – that perfectly mirrors Escovedo’s long journey back from the edge, battling his demons while celebrating their existence as proof positive of one more day spent above ground.
“A toilet bowl full of blood.” That’s what Alejandro Escovedo says he saw after he vomited in his hotel room in Tempe, Ariz., on April 26, 2003. That’s when he knew the Hepatitis C he’d been running from for seven years had finally caught up with him.
He went ahead and did the show that night anyway. It was By the Hand of the Father, a theater piece about Mexican-American fathers—Escovedo’s and dozens of others—featuring slides, monologues by actors and actresses and Escovedo’s original songs performed with his band. But as soon as the show was done, the singer/guitarist collapsed and was rushed to St. Luke’s Hospital.
“When I got to the hospital,” he remembers, “they found I had varices of the esophagus, cirrhosis of the liver and tumors in my abdomen, and they were all bleeding at once. The doctors gave me a blood transfusion and then started talking about a liver transplant or shunts that bypass the liver. This nurse asked me, ‘Why are you here?’ I said, ‘I have hepatitis C, and I’m bleeding internally.’ She whispered conspiratorially, ‘Oh, I have it, too. You know how I deal with it? I drink my urine every morning.’ Then another nurse came in and told me I didn’t have long to live.”
It’s now three years later, and Escovedo is still with us. But he’s not the same; you never come out of a long hospital stay the same person you were when you went in. “I died a little today,” he sings on the song of the same name from The Boxing Mirror, his first studio album in four years. The lovely guitar arpeggio unfurls slowly, as if reluctant to delve into such territory, and there’s a similar hesitation in Escovedo’s wavering tenor as he continues, “I put up a fight and carved a simple hello.” It’s as if we’re back at St. Luke’s Hospital and the news is sinking in. Brian Standefer’s cello enters with the dark undertow of that reality, and the singer adds, “You can hold to the light / So no one will know / We died a little today.”
The song echoes the sound of those early-morning hours, when most of the city is asleep, but you’re still awake, confronting the questions everyone avoids when there are daylight or neon-light distractions. It’s a sound Escovedo had to invent in the early ’90s to fit songs such as “Pissed Off 2 A.M.,” “Broken Bottle” and “As I Fall.” It’s the anguished epiphany of every stop-and-go, yes-and-no, early-morning dilemma. But never had Escovedo had an early morning like April 27, 2003.
“You know how people talk about near-death experiences and how it changes your life so profoundly?” he says of “I Died a Little Today.” “Even Buddhists talk about how everyone should have one. I left a lot of things behind, who I thought I was. I always had this thing about pride, and that’s not necessarily a great thing to possess. I’m still working on it, but I think I have a lot less.”
What makes the new album so impressive is that Escovedo never makes the glib claim that letting go is easy or clean. His doctors finally convinced him he had to stop drinking and smoking if he wanted to live, but he never pretends he doesn’t miss those pleasures. In the song “Arizona,” he sings, “Have another drink on me; I’ve been empty since Arizona.” You can hear alcohol’s allure in John Cale’s bubbling synth figure and in Standefer’s snaking cello line, and you can hear the struggle with temptation in Escovedo’s vocal.
Arizona is not only where he almost died; it’s also where he met his fourth wife, Kim Christoff, while he was still married to his third. “One kiss just led to another,” he sings in the same song, “one kiss just fades into lover.” In other words, some temptations are hard to resist.
For Escovedo, music is a temptation he’s indulging again after a period of abstinence. When he left St. Luke’s, he spent a month in Arizona, walking the desert, wondering if he was going to live, pondering what kind of life might remain ahead of him. When he was strong enough, he, his wife and daughter returned to their home in Wimberley, Texas, in the hills south of Austin. There he was swallowing so much medicine that he barely had the strength to walk around, much less play music.
“Interferon and Ribo?avin f— with your head so much,” he says, “that I was depressed and fatigued and behaving erratically. I wasn’t a very nice person during that year. After a while, the medicine was making me sicker than the disease was. I couldn’t sleep for months because my skin was burning up. I had no red blood cells and no white cells and it was eating away at my bone marrow. I almost needed another blood transfusion.
“Regardless of how sick I got, though, I have to admit that the drugs gave me time; they cleaned out the virus, allowed my liver to regenerate itself and got me to the point where I could switch to a more holistic approach. But it was hell to pay. I didn’t pick up a guitar for almost a year.
“It was like I was suddenly cut loose from the capsule. I wasn’t sure who I was. If I wasn’t a musician, who was I? If I wasn’t traveling in a van, who was I? If I wasn’t staying up all night after the gig, drinking with the guys, who was I? I had to rethink everything, and the only way I could make sense of it was to start writing songs again. The first song I wrote was ‘Arizona.’”
Escovedo’s story is interesting not because he got sick and almost died. That’s the most common story in the world; it’s a story that’s going to happen to all of us sooner or later. Escovedo is interesting because he has a rare gift for turning this universal experience into songs that clarify the feelings behind the facts.
Even before he collapsed in Tempe, his music was haunted by mortality. Many of his early songs tried to make sense of the 1991 suicide of his estranged second wife. Many of his mid-period songs tried to make sense of the hitless songwriter’s life, where so much is said and so little is heard, a career summed up by the album title, More Miles Than Money. And now his newest songs deal with the fact that death knocked on the door once and could always knock again.
The power of these songs comes not so much from the lyrics as from the music. Escovedo’s words set the scene, name the characters and provide the premise, but the real drama is in the sound. It’s the sound of punk rock’s electric and percussive instruments pushing forward while the acoustic instruments of Mexican folk music and classical chamber music pull back; it’s the stabbing notes of fretboards and drum skins set against the sustaining notes of violins, cellos and steel guitars. Ground up between these opposing forces are the lead vocals, a curious blend of Tex-Mex melodrama and hipster-bohemian skepticism, a deadpan description of early morning’s existential crisis.
Since 1970 or so, it has been difficult to create a genuinely new sound within the guitar-rock format; Escovedo is one of the few to pull it off. The style he created for his six solo studio records, from 1992’s Gravity to this year’s The Boxing Mirror, is so different from anything else in rock ’n’ roll that the industry hasn’t known what to do with it. And though it never sold many records, this sound may end up as one of the most influential inventions of the ’90s. After all, who in the 1930s would have said that Robert Johnson would become one of the decade’s most influential artists? Who would have said it of Woody Guthrie in the 1940s? Or of Professor Longhair in the 1950s? Or of The Velvet Underground in the 1960s? Or of Townes Van Zandt in the 1970s?
It took Escovedo a long time to come up with that sound. By the time he turned 24, he still hadn’t picked up a guitar; he was still a fan rather than a player. It was 1975, and he was living in the Palo Alto Hotel, a transient flophouse full of penniless bohemians and former mental patients in San Francisco’s Polk District. Some of the residents were so zonked out on their meds that they couldn’t even calculate the right height for a successful suicide jump. “A third story jump ain’t high enough,” he later sang. “It’s just a mess on Market Street … The neighbors spend their days washing their socks and staring out the windows in a Thorazine haze.”
That song, “Sacramento & Polk,” first appeared on Escovedo’s 1999 album, Bourbonitis Blues, but he re-cut it for the new album, just for the chance to do it with producer John Cale. After all, Cale’s 1974 album, Fear, was something Escovedo listened to every day at the Palo Alto Hotel. Cale thickens the arrangement with distorted guitar, sawing cello and thundering drums ’til you can actually hear the “Thorazine haze.”
Escovedo co-founded primitive punk band, The Nuns, in San Francisco. He moved to New York and joined the Judy Nylon Band and the heady milieu of the downtown punk scene. Then he joined Rank & File, a new band led by Chip and Tony Kinman who were pioneering a fusion of punk and country music. When Rank & File moved to Austin, Escovedo was back in his native state and surrounded by reminders of the border culture he thought he’d left behind.
“I was like the George Harrison of Rank & File,” he says with a laugh. “I was completely overshadowed by Chip and Tony, because they were so good. But I wrote songs anyway, because I knew there was something I needed to say. I started to write when I was past 30, so I wasn’t interested in writing about teenage things. My favorite film teacher in college had told us that the best stories are usually family stories, so I started writing about my family.”
To get these new songs out to the world, Alejandro quit Rank & File, phoned his brother Javier in Los Angeles and told him, “Come out to Austin; we’re forming a new band called the True Believers.” It was 1982, and by 1983 the band was opening for Los Lobos in Austin. When Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo added his accordion to the True Believers’ set that night, a bond was forged, and the two groups would tour together off-and-on for the next four years.
“Los Lobos made me get serious about music,” Escovedo confesses. “They were really good at their instruments and they were open to all kinds of music. We were both blending Chicano roots and rock ’n’ roll, but my rock is so different than Los Lobos’. They’re coming from The Band and Creedence, while I’m coming from the Stones and Stooges and all that aggression and angst. And their Chicano roots are different, too. You can tell Los Lobos apart from the Texas bands, because we have that Tejano-blues aspect, that San Antonio sound of Doug Sahm, Augie Meyers and Flaco Jimenez.
“Back then it was important to declare that rock ‘n’ roll was our music, too. My parents listened to Mexican records, but they also listened to Frank Sinatra. We listened to The Rolling Stones and Marvin Gaye growing up. When you heard bands like Love, the Sir Douglas Quintet, Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs and ? & the Mysterians, you were hearing Mexican-Americans playing rock ’n’ roll. After we met Los Lobos, Javier and I could hear the Chicano influence that had crept into our voices and our guitar lines without our ever being conscious we had put it in there.”
In 1984, Alejandro began inviting Jon Dee Graham, a guitar hero from Austin punk band The Skunks, to sit in with the True Believers. Graham sat in so often that he gradually became the third guitarist without anyone ever saying anything. Graham is not Mexican-American (he’s Cherokee and Scottish among other things), but he grew up near the Rio Grande and absorbed the Tex-Mex culture.
“As a kid I was constantly surrounded by cumbias and rancheros,” Graham explains, “and when you listen to wailing rancheros, they have such a high emotional content they can overwhelm you. Moving away from punk was a natural evolution that was going to happen anyway. There were only two ways to go. You either slip back into what you already know and become a caricature of yourself or you push forward and follow the music wherever it wants to go. Where it wanted to go was a combination of rock ’n’ roll and that border music we had all grown up on.”
A small-budget album, True Believers, was released in 1986, and a big-budget follow-up was finished and scheduled for release in 1987. That album had the potential to lift the band from local heroes to national prominence, to make them the Los Lobos of Texas. But the True Believers were dropped during a shake-up at EMI Records and the second album went unreleased until 1994. Javier hit the road with Will Sexton; Graham moved to L.A. to play guitar for John Doe, and Alejandro hunkered down in Austin to ponder his next move.
“All my influences up to that point had come out of the Stooges/Velvets/Mott [the Hoople] camp,” he remembers, “but my new songs didn’t sound anything like that. A lot of that had to do with where I was living. In Austin, I would go out and hear Townes Van Zandt, Butch Hancock and Billy Joe Shaver and they came out of a different camp—Bob Dylan, Howlin’ Wolf and Jimmie Rodgers.
“They were the best teachers in the world. In punk rock, it was all about the industrial drive, but this was more delicate, more human. When you live in Texas and go to a barbecue, there’s going to be a guitar and it’s going to be passed around. If you call yourself a songwriter, you’d better be ready to sing a song. In learning to play on an acoustic guitar, I learned to ask the question, ‘Can the song survive if all the amplifiers disappear?’
“During the 1980s, we drove between Austin and Los Angeles all the time, and that trip probably influenced my songs more than anything. It’s ‘mi tierra’; it’s where my people came from. I heard the vastness and the emptiness of that landscape in Dylan’s stuff, in Townes’ stuff, in Butch’s stuff. By returning to Mexican folk music, we were closing the circle like Dylan did with his mountain ballads.”
What, he asked himself, was the sound of a landscape so vacant and ruthless? How could he get that sound into his songs? Part of the answer was pushing the Believers’ mix of acoustic and electric guitars to further extremes, so the quiet parts were even quieter, even more lyrical, and the loud parts were even louder, even rawer. And part of the answer was strings. One thing Mexican folk music and New York art-rock had in common was strings.
“The Velvet Underground got me interested in strings,” he says. “Lou Reed’s Street Hassle was the most profound influence, but I also loved John Cale’s early albums and Neil Young’s “A Man Needs a Maid.” I started listening to Nick Drake, [and composers Béla] Bartók and [Erik] Satie. When strings are used well in rock, they can be as aggressive as guitars and as ugly as feedback and yet sound so beautiful. They sound different from the usual guitar records, and they’re very supportive of words.
“And words are important to me. That’s one reason I didn’t join the typical Latin dance band. I wanted people to pay attention to my songs. The storytelling, guitar-oriented songs of rock ’n’ roll fit right in with the Mexican corrido tradition, which I was exposed to by my father and his friends and relatives. My parents would have barbecue parties and after they’d had enough beers, they’d break out guitars. My aunt would start singing and they would all start crying.”
The Alejandro Escovedo Orchestra was founded in 1990, the leader says, to “create a Southwestern version of Brian Eno’s Another Green World.” To capture that atmospheric texture, Escovedo invited violinists, cellists, trumpeters, saxophonists and steel guitarists to the weekly gigs in Austin. Soon, it really was an orchestra, a rock ’n’ roll big band, the roots-punk equivalent of Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound.”
For most of the ’90s, the Orchestra would play the final Sunday night of the SXSW Music Conference with 15 to 20 musicians onstage. Many critics (including me) consider those shows some of the most thrilling concerts they’ve ever witnessed. But the tapes have gone unreleased. Part of the problem was technical; it’s difficult to capture so many players with so little rehearsal in tune and in tempo. Part of the problem was economic; without major-label support, you can’t record such a large ensemble or tour with it.
Instead, the orchestra’s sound was distilled by producer Stephen Bruton to a small combo for Escovedo’s ?rst solo album, 1992’s Gravity. Instead of orchestral rock, this was chamber rock, especially on the four cuts that featured cellist John Hagen. One song described the voice of a departing lover as the sound of “Five Hearts Breaking.” That was the sound of Escovedo’s own voice, too, as he sang of those early-morning hours when “the party’s over and we won’t go; no one to laugh at our jokes anymore,” when the good liquor is gone and there’s nothing left to do but “pour me a drink from a broken bottle and fill my glass with the dirty water; what I’ve lost is gone and what I’ve gained has no name.”
One thing he’d lost was his second wife, Bobbie Levie, who committed suicide in 1991 shortly after they separated. Her ghost haunts the album, most obviously on “She Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” “Broken Bottle” and “Gravity/Falling Down Again.” The latter captures the vertigo when the flooring of every assumption you’ve ever had is pulled out from under your feet. The song boasted the grating guitar, droning strings and unflinching vocal of its model, Lou Reed’s “Street Hassle.” Later, in his live shows, Escovedo would yoke “Gravity” and “Street Hassle” together in a malignantly brilliant 12-minute medley.
Escovedo and Bruton collaborated on the 1993 follow-up, Thirteen Years, which extended the themes and sound of Gravity with a more prominent use of strings and Mexican motifs. The elusive reviews convinced big indie label Rykodisc to sign Escovedo and sink some money into his 1996 album, With These Hands, and the 1997 album, The Pawn Shop Years, by his hard-rock side project Buick MacKane. It seemed Escovedo was again poised for a breakthrough.
It didn’t happen. None of these albums sold 30,000 copies; other artists weren’t recording the songs, and the singer slogged his way across the country, from small club to small club with a guitar case full of press clippings and unpaid bills.
“The road is very seductive,” he concedes. “When you’ve been doing it a long time and you’re not making much money, what becomes the attraction? It’s when a stranger tells you how great you are. That becomes the medicine that you take to deal with all the pain. Eventually there’s a point when the perks of this occupation become more important than the occupation itself.
“You go to the gig and after the gig you stay at the bar drinking all night and singing for the help; that becomes more important than ‘How do we work on this verse and make it better?’ A lot of musicians on the road are running away; ultimately they’re running away from themselves. You enter this never-never world where you’re always young, because it’s a young-man’s game. Then one day you realize that all you’re doing is selling beer.”
When the tour for With These Hands got to Canada, Escovedo’s bandmates noticed he was turning colors human skin wasn’t meant to be. The doctors told him he had Hepatitis C and he’d have to stop drinking. He did for a while.
“I tried to deal with it as best as I could,” he says. “I didn’t have the money to go to St. Louis to see the doctor who cured Naomi Judd. As I lifted myself out of it, I thought it was OK to have a glass of wine—everything in moderation. But before I knew it, I was drinking a lot again. Then one day in a Louisiana hotel room, I could hardly get out of bed to go to the next gig. The maids were looking at me like I was pathetic, and I realized how far away I had gotten from what I set out to do.”
Even so, he continued to make impressive records. The spectacular live album, More Miles Than Money: 1994-96, was released in 1998. A collection of tracks from scattered recording sessions, Bourbonitis Blues, came out in 1999. By the Hand of the Father—the mixed-blessing soundtrack from the theater production—emerged in 2002, just a year after Escovedo’s finest moment, the Chris Stamey-produced A Man Under the Influence. And then, on April 26, 2003, he collapsed in Tempe.
Like most musicians, he had no health insurance. So his manager Heinz Geissler and Larry Miller of Or Music asked a few musicians if they’d record tracks for a fund-raising album to be called Por Vida: A Tribute to the Songs of Alejandro Escovedo. The response was so overwhelming that plans for a single-disc, 12-song album mushroomed into a two-disc, 32-track package with contributions from Steve Earle, Ian Hunter, The Jayhawks, John Cale, Son Volt, Los Lonely Boys, The Cowboy Junkies and many more.
“I was still messed up on the medicine,” Escovedo recounts, “and Heinz would play the tracks for me as they came in and I would just sob like a baby. I was especially moved by Cale’s version of ‘She Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’ and Hunter’s version of ‘One More Time.’ The reason I do what I do is because of their music. I had started out trying to sound like them, and now they gave me back my songs, making them sound like they should have sounded. That’s when I realized I had to fight this thing and get back to music.”
On March 21, 2004, at the end of SXSW, Escovedo stepped on the stage of the Continental Club for his first public performance since Tempe. Dressed in buttoned-up black shirt and tan suede jacket, he moved gingerly and his face bore new creases. “It’s just time and it’s gone, but that’s the way it goes,” he sang on the first song, as if shrugging off his lost year.
Facing a packed house of Austin fans and music critics, he sang, “Everybody says they love me, but I don’t know why,” on the fourth song, and halfway through that number he seemed to shake off the rust and doubts. He looked over at Jon Dee Graham; their guitar riffs locked up and took off. Brian Standefer underlined those riffs on cello, and Hector Muñoz, Escovedo’s drummer since the last days of the True Believers, gave everything a firm shove forward. You could almost hear the people on the nightclub’s packed floor finally let go of their bated breath. There would be another chapter of the Alejandro Escovedo story after all.
To ease himself back into touring, he formed the Alejandro Escovedo String Quintet with Standefer, second cellist Matt Fish, violinist Susan Voelz and acoustic guitarist David Polkingham. When they visited the Rams Head Tavern in Annapolis, Md., recently, the ?ve musicians—dressed all in black—sat in a semi-circle of wooden chairs and played old songs and new ones with a hushed intimacy that coaxed previously hidden nuances from the former. In the lobby, they were selling their two-CD, 14-song, web-only release, Room of Songs.
But, now, with The Boxing Mirror hitting record stores, Escovedo has reconvened his rock ’n’ roll band, the one that made the record—Graham, Standefer, Muñoz, Voelz and bassist Mark Andes. It’ll be back on the road that provided him with so many pleasures and temptations in the past. The challenge will be to choose the healthy pleasures and forsake the others. Escovedo is optimistic, but he’s also aware of the dangers. “Speak to me softly, and tell me you love me,” he sings on “Break This Time,” the new album’s galloping, Stones-y rocker. “We’ll join together inside the refrain,” he exults; then he adds the necessary warning, “But I just might break this time.”
“It’s like being in love,” he says of his career at this point; “you never know what the experience is going to be like, but you just throw yourself in there. It’s like surfing; every wave is different, and sometimes you get spit out at the end. I feel like I’ve been through a lot in the last few years and I’ve been spit out and I’m glad to still be standing.”
Critically acclaimed singer/songwriter Alejandro Escovedo has signed to Back Porch Records. The label will release his seventh album, and first in more than five years, in early 2006.
Nov. 4 is Alejandro Escovedo Day, literally. Not only will the respected musician be honored with an all-star benefit concert at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas, but shortly beforehand there will be a special ceremony where Austin mayor Will Wynn will proclaim Nov. 4 Alejandro Escovedo Day.
The outpouring of support for Escovedo has been overwhelming since he was diagnosed with Hepatitis C last year. Known for his influence on alt.country and roots musicians, it's no surprise many of Escovedo's friends, including Los Lonely Boys, John Cale (Velvet Underground), Ruben Ramos, Bob Neuwirth, Tres Chicas, Butch Hancock (The Flatlanders), Lenny Kaye, Jon Dee Graham and The Section String Quartet plan to join him at the first annual Por Vida: Benefit for Life concert at the Paramount Theater. Several of the participating artists will be led by a Charlie Sexton all-star band.
Many of the same artists are featured on Por Vida, a double-disc benefit record that helped increase awareness of the disease and cover Escovedo's medical costs. Its impressive sales were able to help jumpstart a charitable fund in the musician's honor. The Alejandro Fund, which officially launches Nov. 4, will not only address the crisis of Hepatitis C within the music community, but also help provide medical assistance and relief for uninsured professional musicians and others living with the disease.
There will also be a gala and special silent auction prior to the concert at Austin's historic Driskill Hotel.
For more information on the Alejandro Fund, please visit: www.alejandrofund.com
A multi-artist, two-CD tribute to Alejandro Escovedo’s music will be released July 13 by Or Music. The album, Por Vida, will benefit the Alejandro Escovedo Medical & Living Expense fund, while also raising public awareness about Hepatitis C and aiding a permanent fund for musicians suffering from the disease.
Following a performance in April 2003, Escovedo was hospitalized due to complications from Hepatitis C. His illness has since left him unable to tour, support his family or pay his mounting medical bills.
Fans and peers responded with overwhelming support, staging benefit concerts in major American cities and forming a fund for Escovedo with a website to take incoming contributions, www.alejandrofund.com.
Artists who influenced Escovedo, along with his friends and admirers will perform his music on Por Vida. Among the artists who will appear are John Cale, Caitlin Cary, Calexico, Peter Case, Billy Corgan, Cowboy Junkies, Pete Escovedo and Sheila E., The Flatlanders, Howe Gelb & Giant Sand, The Jayhawks, Jon Langford & Sally Timms (Mekons), Los Lonely Boys, The Minus 5, Charlie Musselwhite & Charlie Sexton, Bob Neuwirth, Son Volt, Chris Stamey, Tres Chicas, M. Ward & Vic Chesnutt, Whiskeytown/Ryan Adams, and Lucinda Williams.
Organizers of the upcoming Alejandro Escovedo benefit/tribute album, Por Vida-For Life, are considering expanding the project to a 2-cd set with the exciting news that the following artists have committed to participate: John Cale, Billy Corgan, Jackson Browne, Whiskeytown, The Jayhawks, Howe Gelb, Calexico, Chuck Prophet, Peter Case, Ian Hunter, Los Lobos, Cowboy Junkies, The Flatlanders, Beth Orton & M. Ward, Jennifer Warnes, Los Lonely Boys, and Pete Escovedo and Sheila E (Alejandro's brother and niece, respectively).
Por Vida-For Life is scheduled for an April release by Or Music. The album both celebrates the artistry of and benefits the acclaimed musician and songwriter Alejandro Escovedo, who became ill in April 2003 from complications due to hepatitis C and is currently undergoing treatment for the disease. Por Vida will benefit the Alejandro Escovedo Medical & Living Expense Trust. To donate, visit www.alejandrofund.com.
A new web site has been set up to collect donations for ailing singer-songwriter Alejandro Escovedo.
Due to complications brought on by Hepatitis-C, Escovedo collapsed after performing in Phoenix, Ariz. On April 26. After the show, he was diagnosed with advanced cirrhosis of the liver, a problem resulting from the hepatitis.
Currently, Escovedo is at home in Canyon Lake, Tex., resting and undergoing treatment to alleviate the effects of his condition. Without medical coverage and unable to make money from performing, Escovedo is in need of assistance. Those who wish to make donations to help defray the cost of treatment can do so online at www.alejandrofund.com.
“This is a secure site, and all monies will go DIRECTLY to Al,” said Escovedo’s friend and former Whiskeytown member, Caitlin Cary, who has been trying to get the word out about the fund. “I know that many of you are concerned, and many have already agreed to help. In advance, I thank you all.”
Escovedo, who will be taking a long hiatus from touring to recover from his illness, said he wishes to thank his many supporters for their generosity and good wishes in his time of need.
Contests.
Jolie Holland - "Mexico City"
