ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO |
Alejandro Escovedo became a legend in his own time the right way: By making extraordinary music and writing songs that stand among the best written in our time. Summarizing that music and those songs is the hard part. “Alejandro Escovedo is in his own genre,” as Rolling Stone’s David Fricke wrote, describing him as “a folk-blues classicist with a gritty, plaintive voice and an equal fondness for dirty boogie and spectral balladry.” Rock fans know him as a writer who can put together songs that echo the Stones and the Stooges, the Velvets and Bob Dylan, the Clash and Brian Wilson, the Faces and Patti Smith, Mott the Hoople and the Mekons. Alejandro also dips at will into the mariachi music and Latin jazz of his father, and the orquestra, the jarocho, Tejano, Norteno and even marimba. This links him not just to Mexico but through it, to Spain, North Africa, West Africa, and the Mayan and Aztec cultures, just as the blues elements of his rock’n’roll link him to West Africa and the punk parts to Western Europe. He is one of the greatest of the Texas troubadors, ranking alongside Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and Ray Wylie Hubbard in depth of feeling and poetic grace. He is a great folk-rocker in the Dylan tradition, and an heir of country rock’s Gram Parsons. Part of the legend comes from No Depression, the roots music magazine, naming him “artist of the decade” well before 2000. A lot of people thought that was kind of extreme. Nobody ever said they were wrong. Another part comes from the diversity of his live shows, which might feature Alejandro by himself with a guitar, or with a seven piece mini-orchestra featuring a string section, or a driving rock band (usually accompanied by a string player or two). The hallmark of all these shows is their deep intimacy, a feeling of direct personal contact, whether that means being blasted by the rock group or tenderly caressed by the strings. Born into a large and musical family in South Texas, Alejandro Escovedo grew up in Orange County, California and in both places, he lived in a world saturated with music. His father preferred more traditional Mexican sounds; his mother liked pop dance music. Rock & roll blared from the car radio and his cousin Delores obsessed over Elvis singles. Country and western and soul also arrived through the radio, and local clubs featured dozens of bands of all different sorts. Music was a constant presence, even in the depth of night: “We would leave the radio on all night long and all these songs would speak to us like dreams.” Alejandro, whose musical home turf is rock, fondly remembers a local club, The Golden Bear, where he saw Mark Andes, now an occasional collaborator, with Spirit, as well as Love and Buffalo Springfield. Later, his brothers, Pete and Coke, helped lead the salsa-rock revolution, playing with Santana, Malo, Herbie Hancock, Cal Tjader, as well as recording on their own as Azteca and on solo albums. He still travels with a trove of rock and soul 45s, using them as a spiritual centering point. He loves the richness of love ballads as much as the wildness of hard rockers—”All I Have to Do is Dream” as much as “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” He seemed so fascinated by music that his father, Pedro Escovedo, who worked at many trades (including as a mariachi), swapped a plumbing job for a guitar--”a Les Paul Custom copy.” Alejandro promptly took it apart to paint it. It was brother Javier who put it back together and began to play. At this stage, Alejandro remained the omnivorous listener, his artistic ambitions focused on making pictures and movies. He went to college in San Francisco during the height of the punk scene, and decided that his student film project would be a movie about “the worst band in the world.” He decided to play in the band himself. But the Nuns quickly became a notoriously good punk band. Like most such, they didn’t last long and Alejandro became one of the first punk rockers to move to Austin and where he picked up with his next group, the alt-country pioneers Rank and File, and then with Javier, the True Believers (which also included legendary Texas writer-performer Jon Dee Graham). Unbelievably for someone so accomplished, it wasn’t until he founded True Believers that Alejandro became a songwriter. True Believers lasted until 1987 and he turned toward the more introspective and deeply personal music for which he’s best known. Now Alejandro began fashioning a series of musically diverse solo albums with songs as melodically moving as they are lyrically elegant and performances that often match the range and intimacy of his live shows. The first, Gravity, appeared in 1993, immediately winning Alejandro local and national accolades: He was named Austin’s Musician of the Year. He followed in 1994 with Thirteen Years, his most personal album ever, drawing on his marriage to his first wife Bobbi, their break-up, her eventual suicide and his efforts to endure past that point. It’s one of the most courageous confessional singer-songwriter albums ever made, and one of the most elegant and beautiful as well. Alejandro has made four roughly similar albums since then: With These Hands, Bourbonitis Blues, and A Man Under the Influence are studio works, while More Miles Than Money: Live 1994-1996 delivers on the diversity of his sounds and intensity of his performances. A constant presence in the Austin scene, where he would appear with a 13 piece Alejandro Escovedo Orchestra as the climactic event of the annual South By Southwest music festival, he toured constantly, not only in the U.S. but in Europe. He formed the Setters, a rock band, with Walter Salas-Humara of the Silos and Michael Hall of the Wild Seeds, and made a powerful punk rock album, The Pawn Shop Years, with another side project, Buick McKane. In 1999, Alejandro began showcases of By the Hand of the Father, a theatrical production built around songs he had written that were inspired by the stories of Pedro Escovedo and other Mexican men of his generation who had emigrated to the United States, as well as Alejandro’s personal experience as the father of seven children. The piece included several of the most compelling songs from his solo albums, including “The Ballad of the Sun and the Moon,” as well as new music specifically composed for the production. Its premiere in Los Angeles in June 2000 earned critical raves: “soulful,” “uplifting,” “celebratory,” “impassioned.” By the Hand of the Father: Stories & Songs from the Original Theatrework featured performances by Alejandro, PeteEscovedo, Rosie Flores, Ruben Ramos of Los Super Seven and Cesar Rosas of LosLobos and did a very good job of telling the tale solely in sound. His concepts had come full circle: “you were trying to make movies that were about music and somehow had the rhythm of music, and then you end up being a musician who eventually tries to write songs that are like movies.” He calls this “a bizarre thing,” but looked at from another perspective, the process testifies to a very organic vision, relentlessly pursued. In April 2002, during a performance of By the Hand of the Father in Tucson, Arizona, that pursuit came to a premature—though fortunately temporary—halt when Alejandro collapsed. He had lived for years with the complications of Hepatitis C, which had claimed the life of his brother Coke, but even knowing the possible consequences, Alejandro had not truly managed the disease. In the emergency room in Tucson, critically ill, he began to accept his condition and take control over it—it was the only way to survive. Yet as a musician for whom “More Miles Than Money” was more a description than a motto, Alejandro Escovedo now found himself in a very tight corner. He had a very large family to take care of; no medical insurance and rapidly mounting health care costs; and no way other than playing music of making a living. The love and intensity of expression that Alejandro had given to his music, to his musical peers and to his audiences took over, much to his own amazement. In a fair number of cities where he’d performed, an array of artists put together benefit concerts to help sustain him and contributions to the Alejandro Escovedo Medical and Living Expense Fund [www.alejandrofund.com] gave him enough security so that he could begin treatment. His prognosis changed from poor to good, although the disease would remain something for him to battle every day for the rest of his life. In 2004, Or Music responded to Alejandro’s crisis with an album of his songs, Por Vida, performed by a stellar assortment of artists, including such Alejandro influences as John Cale, Pete Escovedo and his daughter Sheila E (Alejandro’s niece), Ian McLagan of the Faces, Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople, Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group who produced Nuggets, the album that contains much of the ‘60s garage rock and early psychedelia that affected Alejandro’s tastes. On the other side, among those influenced by Alejandro. Son Volt, one of the premiere Americana bands who followed in the wake of Alejandro’s breakthrough solo albums, reformed just for the occasion. Somewhere in-between were the contributions of Austin colleagues Lucinda Williams, Charlie Sexton and Los Lonely Boys, former True Believer Jon Dee Graham, Chris Stamey, who produced A Man Under the Influence, close friend Bob Neuwirth, and Jennifer Warnes, who sang on With These Hands. Por Vida (“For Life” in Spanish) proved a triumph both artistically and commercially. On November 4, 2004, officially proclaimed Alejandro Escovedo Day by Austin’s mayor, many of the Por Vida artists celebrated his work and life with a show at Austin’s Continental Club. Money raised went to the Alejandro Fund, which recentered much of its focus to the growing national and international health crisis posed by a virtual epidemic of Hepatitis C. But these events were not the climax of Alejandro Escovedo’s career, and certainly not its summation. Refreshed and as courageous as ever, in late 2004, he began working live again and throughout that year, he recorded a soundtrack for an independent film, a Christmas single, “A Gift for the Crow” and the powerful anti-war song, “Notes on Air,” (released on 13 Ways to Live, a benefit album for the anti-landmine campaign). Lyrics for both songs were written by his wife, Kim Christoff. The legend of Alejandro Escovedo, therefore, is not complete but has simply entered its latest phase. Wise music lovers await the results with high expectations. Dave Marsh
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