Pushkin.
Alejandro Escavito is a Texas born singer songwriter who comes from a rich family of musicians, including his niece Sheila e E. Of course for Escavito, Alejandro started out in the pioneering in San Francisco punk band The Nuns in nineteen seventy five. From there, he moved to New York and then eventually settled in Austin, where he started playing rootsy rock with bands like Rank and File as well
as The True Believers. In March, Alejandro Escavito released his latest album, Echo Dancing, a retrospective of his career that spans five decades. Inspired by artists like Brian Nino and Suicide, Alejandro Escavito both reimagines and re records his previous work
on this album. On today's episode, Bruce Hedlam talks to Alejandro Escavito about his late start in music, his upbringing in San Antonio and Huntington Beach, where he'd sometimes pretend to be Hawaiian to avoid Askacans, along with some great stories about his swings through Austin and San Francisco, like being on the bill for the Sex Pistols final show
and what makes those scenes so special? Alejandro also discussed is why he's tried not to foreground his Chicano identity, even as it's been front and center, for better and worse through much of his personal life. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
I'm justin Mitchman.
Here's Bruce Hedlum's conversation with Alejandro Escovito.
For people who don't know your well, they might even know your career, recording career starting in ninety two.
Or so well, from my solo records, your solo.
Records, But people who don't know your your pre solo work, I mean, you were in the La punk scene, the New York punk scene, you San Francisco, San Francisco punk scene, you open for sex Show, and of course you know you're a legend in Austin, so you've you've been part of all these great music scenes. So this new album Echo Dancing, you revisit songs not just from your own solo work, but before that.
Yes, I went all the way back. I mean I recorded a Nun song. Yeah, a version of a song called Lazy which Jennifer used to come out and sing solo on piano, and we did a beautiful version. But we're saving it for When I went to Italy to record, I did eighteen songs and fourteen made the album and four are being held back for a covers record. And those songs were lazy. I did a Kevin Kenny song
called Another Scarlet Butterfly. I did a song by Tom Waits called on the Nickel, and I did Leonard Cohen's Alexandra Leaving.
I love Alexander Lee's So Beautiful Man, It's classic. That was from that. The ten songs, Yeah, I can't remember that record. Great record, one of my favorites of all time. Yeah, I just love that record.
So anyway, we did those and I'm working on collecting now all the songs I'll be doing for a covers record. I know I'm going to do a Scott Walker song called Duchess. You know, do you know the song?
I don't know thet so on.
I think, and you know things like that. A songwriter out of Austin or Texas called Will Johnson. I'm doing one of his. I'm doing a John Doe song, you know, things like that.
That's great, But why why revisit these songs? Now? What was going on that you wanted to look back on some of your own work, and we record it.
Honestly, I think that ever since, you know, I was stricken with a disease in about two thousand and three. It was it was a hepatitis C. They told me I had a year to live if I didn't get a liver transplant, and it was a very dire time. Two years of not working, you know, and I'd been hitting the road hard all my life, you know, and so it gave me a chance to really kind of
sit back finally and reflect. And in doing so, I thought so much about the bands that i'd been in, the Nuns rank and file, especially Judy Nylon here in New York, and everything I learned along the way. And so the next album I made, I co wrote with Chuck Prophet, and it was the story of all those bands. It was called Real Animals. And it seems that from that point on it's been a matter of just kind of kind of looking back at how to tell the story,
you know, continue to tell the story. And I just felt that at this point, I'll be seventy four next year, it was a good time to to really kind of just go back and play around with these songs, you know, because I've never felt like, you know, the thing about making a record is once you record that album, by the time the record's released, let's say six months later or so, you're already on to new things. You're singing
those songs differently. They might even be arranged differently. You've decided that instead of a full band, maybe this song only requires you know, cello and violin or something or piano, so, you know. And they had done a tribute album for me when I was ill. It was called Porvida, and Calexico had done a version of a song called Wave. And when I got on the plane to go to Italy, I began to listen to that record just for inspiration.
And suddenly my intention had shifted from going to Italy to make a completely improvised record to re revisiting these older songs like John cale had done, like Colexico had done. That record had thirty two artists. Licinda had been on it, you know, Steve are a lot of great people. Ian Hunter. So I went back. I thought, this is cool man, you know, let's go back. And I already had started to work with the song sensitive Boys is just a piano piece, and so when I got to the recording
studio in Italy. We began with the Sensitive Boys and then Wave, the Glexico version kind of or inspired version.
I should say, So you were covering cover versions of you.
Yeah.
I want to ask you in particular about bury Me, which was a standout on your first solo record, Ryot Gravity. You did that in the nineties when you were I think you were around forty when you disd your first solo outs. Yep, so you mentioned you were You're just you're about to turn seventy four. Where were you in that when Gravity came out and you were singing bury Me for the first time.
My life has been a lot of tests in my life. I've been tested and at that point, my wife had committed suicide and I was raising a nine year old and a six month old girl, two girls, and it was just a very difficult time and the burden of that grief and working through the grief. The only method I really had outside of therapy was writing songs, you know, and bury Me was kind of like this almost kind of like an expression of saying, I wish that had
happened to me instead of you. I wish the roles had been reversed, you know, and to be buried with, you know, the lies I've told and a rusted sword and my bully suit and my favorite picture of you. We're all kind of like things, you know, symbolized a lot of the things that were happening with me at the time. And yet at the same time, I had no choice but to raise my children, you know, so it was tough. You know.
Do you think your children got you through that? In some ways?
Absolutely? You know, it was probably the only thing that got me through that, you know, because it wasn't you know, nothing was working other than that, you know, you know, like alcohol. I mean, obviously I threw myself and I was drinking too much and stuff, but the main thing was just taking care of the kids and making that happen.
What's that like to revisit that song? Now? How did you How did you want to record it this time?
I just wanted it to be rougher, you know, just kind of more honest, more, you know, a little more primitive version of the song. And you know, it started out as kind of like a blue blues he kind of almost like a country blues thing, you know, And I remember that when you know.
I'm going to ask you if you can show me what the country blues going to do? That? All right, that's okay, But.
You know, at that time bury me was actually when Rick was producing Johnny Cash's records, the solo records. You know, they actually that song got thrown into the pile of songs. It didn't make it, but it was one of the songs that you know, I threw it for that. I would have loved to have heard Johnny Cash sing that song.
Yeah, it might have been a little lower than your version. Most likely you wanted it. You say you wanted it rougher. That's a pretty dark song originally and pretty.
Start kind of like a symphonic thing about it. There was something just kind of like you know, with the synthesizer and stuff like that, you know, and now I just kind of wanted like to be a little kind of just tougher a little bit.
You know, I'm interested. Do you have your children listened to it?
Yes?
What did they think?
You know, It's funny because my kids were the first ones to hear my songs during that period of time gravity thirteen years with these hands, those first kind of trilogy of that period of time, which was like, you know, obviously guilt Gravity was the darkest one. Thirteen years was kind of like a more kind of melancholy look at what had happened, you know, and then with these sounds was kind of like coming out of this phase of grief, you.
Know, living when you recorded the Boston album, So were you working at home at that point?
I was working at Waterloo Records. I was a record store clerk.
Are you kidding? I didn't know that.
Yeah for many years.
Yeah, okay, would you take your breaks and pull up a guitar?
You know. It was funny because when the record came out, I was selling my own record.
Anybody came in and said, man, whatever's playing, just take it off, hey.
And of course I'd also accept the returns when they came in.
Yeah.
No, not really, but.
I'll bet you kicked up a fist. You grew up in a musical family, yes, sir, Yeah, your father was your father full time musician?
No, he was, he was. He thought of himself as a crooner, had sang in big bands in the thirties and forties and also had worked and you know, my father was born in Mexico in Salt Deal nineteen oh seven he was born and crossed the borders when he was twelve looking for his parents, who had moved on into Texas to find work. So he sang in work camps and played guitar a little bit and sang I love. My father loved rock and roll, aroun chettas and big band music. That was this thing. And my mom was
more kind of cultured and sophisticated. She had grown up in San Marcos and graduated from college there and then went to work at the Pentagon in Washington, DC as a secretary. And so she went out and saw you know, jazz and you know comedians. She told me she saw Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce and all those guys, you know, that kind of thing. So, yeah, she was hipper and my kind of very sophisticated, beautiful woman, really kind of
starlet beauty, you know. And so I had those two kind of things always playing in my head, you know, big band music and more orchestrated kind of you know, big band music on my mom's side, sophisticated jazz. And then she came in my first Winton Kelly record, you know, and like my dad was really into ronchetta's and conjuntos and things like that.
You know, is that where you get your love of strings? You've always had such great strings.
That and I think that also two records were my templates when I first started went Sola Were a Street House was by Lou Reed and Paris nineteen nineteen by John Klee, And those two records kind of gave me the idea. And also Ronnie Lane's record and Slim Chants, because Ronnie was living in Austin and so I played in his band and it was a big string band, but mostly like violin, more like fiddle and mandolins and banjos and acoustic guitars and stuff, but really cool. It
was so great to learn from Ronnie. You know, I loved Ronnie. I was a big Faces fan.
When you were a kid. Was that your taste like British Invasion? That kind of music?
My taste of music began with Elvis and the Big Bopper. I love Solomon Burke and Fats Domino was a hero of mine.
Were you a piano player?
No, I was not a musician.
I mean everybody in your family was a musician. People who know you know your brothers were in jazz bands, big bands, Your niece is Sheila E from Princess Great Band. Yeah, but you didn't play till much later.
I didn't start playing until I was twenty four.
What happened? Your dad gave you a guitar when you were young.
I had a guitar very early. I took it apart to paying it, gave it to me, never put it back together. Have My brother picked it up, my younger brother, Haavier, who was a much better guitar player than I am, and he picked it up and he really took to it, and you know, he was kind of more into the guitar. But I was a surfer. I was a baseball player. I loved surfing. I was you know, we grew up in Huntington Beach, California, and.
You were born in San Antonio, right, and then moved to California.
We moved when I was seven, six or seven, and we lived in Orange County, first in Orange, California, and then Huntington Beach.
What was the surfing scene like then.
It's a very different surfing scene. It was not an integrated or diverse surfancy.
Yeah.
It was purely kind of you know, Anglo white, chalky kind of guys. You know, and the Mexican kids and the surfers always battled. So I was somewhere in the middle. I had long air and surf like my hero David Nueva. So the surfers thought I was Hawaiian. He passed his Hawaiian, so I would be Hawaiian in order not to get my ass kicked from time to time. So yeah, that's what you know.
I'm thinking every Mexican at the border now should just be yeah, I'm Hawaiian.
That would be a good one. I think that would do.
That would do that. I think you figured it out.
Yeah, so yeah, that was the deal. And uh and then there was a great record store on Main Street in Hunton Beach. This older hippie guy took a liking to me and would turn me onto records, you know, and he was really he was an anglophile. So Yardbirds, pretty Things, Kinks, all those great records, you know, Lord
Sutch and you do these odd things. And he turned me on to my you know, when the Roxy music album came out and all the Mantahope records, you know from Wildlife from the very first one, turned me onto all the Bowie, all the t rex All that stuff came to him, and I just became mesmerized by that music and that look and that style.
What was it about the music that grabbed you so much? The guitars, yeah.
The loud ronson and guys like Jimmy Page I loved and you know Keith, of course, you always love Keith. You gotta love Keith. You know, he's just the greatest rhythm player, you know. And so I took a real liking to end the clothes, you know, and the fashion was a big.
Did you have any growing up? Did you like Mexican music growing up through your father?
You know, It's funny because the punk rock was a rebellion. A lot of people thought rock and roll was basically a rebellion against your parents, right, But I mean I personally did not have anything against the music that my parents listened to. I loved it. You know. It was familial and it was warm and it felt like home,
you know. So every time I hear that kind of music, I think of my parents and being younger at the house where my parents would dance at the drop of a hat, you know, they just start and my dad would sing to my mom all the time, you know.
Oh, it's amazing.
Yeah, like in a restaurant. We'd be in a restaurant and so you built out this tune to her, you know, this love song and everyone would clap after it was cool.
That amazing.
Yeah.
And was he a guitar player as well?
My father was a guitar player, but a very rough guitar player. Like, yeah, I took after my dad.
Yeah. Now you went to San Francis. I just so I get this right. You were interested in film, you were a big film buff.
Well here's yeah. So then when you know the new wave German, new Wave, French, new wave, Italian neo realism, I took to that, right, So we wanted to be a filmmaker. I wasn't playing guitar. I was checking out every band I could, buying every record, I could, reading every Enemy Sounds, Melody Maker out, I could Cream Rolling Stone, all that, just totally, you know, just digesting everything, you know. And then we decided to run away, my girlfriend and
I from Hollywood where I was living. This is after seeing the Dolls and the Stooges and Patty Smith for the first time, and you know these great bands Roxy and Mott and you know Slade and you know, just incredible music. And we decided we'd run away to San Francisco, and we took off one night hitch high to San Francisco from Hollywood, and it was there that my friend and I were going to make a movie about the
shittiest band in the world. And since we thought we looked so cool, we thought we'd play the band because we couldn't play, so we'll be the band in the movie. And that band became the Nuns, and then the Nuns you know, by it, I don't know, it just kind of happened to take off in San Francisco. It was a good time. Punk rock embraced us, and we weren't
really punk rock. We just couldn't play, you know. And uh, but we looked cool and we seemed to fit into the scene and we became a big band in San Francisco. But we never toured or anything. You know. You say you warmed up for show at Winterland.
Yes, So what was that like for you?
It was like it was like a circus gone bad, you know, Yeah, like suddenly the elephants or stampede and then the animals have been cut loose from the cage's Yeah, it was crazy, you know, it was. It was a spectacle. It wasn't rock and roll. It was a spectrum.
Did you like their music?
I loved the sex Mistles the first the forty fives were great. Yeah, the album was great.
Yeah.
I loved them, But they weren't a band anymore by the time they got to Frisco. They were They weren't playing together or anything. Really.
Yeah, And did you think of yourself as a band by that point? You started as a non band, yeah, came the band.
Yeah. And then shortly after the sex Mistle show, you know, Sid came to our house that night, hung out with us, and then we said, you know, he invited us to go to London, and then we went to New York. We came to New York to play and that was seventy eight.
That was that at his urging or you just did that on your own.
I'm sorry, it wasn't We.
Had Sid Vicious suggested you go to New York.
We were ready to go somewhere and New York was the only place that we felt comfortable.
Did you like Sid Vicious?
Yeah, he was great, It's great. He was sweet man. He was a good kid. He loved rock, and roll, and the problem I think was more that he became a caricature and that character caricature killed him, you know. But I don't think that, you know, he was he was kind of pushed in that direction, you know, by management, by fans, you know.
But I don't know.
It's a strange story.
So what was New York like for you? Then?
You know, I never wanted you know, like in high school, people were always I want to go. I can't wait to go to Paris and you know, London and wherever, you know, And I just wanted to come to New York because the Velvet Underground were from New York, the dolls were from New York, the Young Rascals were from New York, you know, and all the great doop of the fifties was from New York, it seemed. And I just really wanted to come. And for me, it was
we moved to Chelsea. We lived a rock and roll dream kind.
Of you know, what was the Chelsea like at that point?
It was still kind of like it was in the sixties and stuff. You know, there's still a lot of characters. Charles James, the great clothing designers still lived there, lived there for years, never paid rent, you know, standing would let him get by for whatever favors. To Francesco Scavulu, I think out a studio downstairs and just all these great people in and out, you know. And I met so many great people, you know. I met Ki Kid, Creole and the Coconuts. So he hang out with the
same people that I hung out. So there was a big studio apartment that this woman lived in and she would host like, you know, little soirees during the day and all these people would come over. It was great. It was you know, it was all everything I had thought about when I watched Warhol films and yeah, Midnight Cowboy and whatever. You know. It was a dream kind of come true. You know.
Yeah. Not a lot of people watch Midnight Cowboy and say, wow, no I want some of that.
Well, you know, the kind of band that we were and the kind of people were kind of lent them lent themselves to that.
Okay, what kind of what kind of people were you?
Uh? We were fuck ups with guitars. Yeah, you know, we really were. We had no future, as they say, you know, we we were just kids who I personally was different than the rest of them. Of course, We were all different, but you know, we dabbled in drugs. You know, we were we were heathen like you know, and you know we're from San Francisco. San Francisco in those days was pretty wild. You know, it's Babylon. You know.
We'll be right back with more from Alejandro Escavito.
After the break.
We're back with more from Alejandro Escavito.
So was there one point in which you thought, I want to make music that's going to last. I want to get past this.
It didn't happen until my daughter Maya was born and I was living in Austin because when I moved to Austin said, I wasn't surrounded by like performance artists and fake jazz and this and that. I was surrounded by hardcore songwriters right Towns, Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Jimmie Dale, Gilmour, Joe Eely, Butch Hancock and one of the greatest of them all. You know, just these amazing songwriters.
You know, were you going out and seeing them at night? Did you know them?
Oh? You could see them in a backyard Towns at a barbecue. You know. It was that kind of place, you know, and I just soaked it in. I just really loved it. You know, I was home. I was back in Texas. I was surrounded by these incredible genius songwriters and they took to me. And you know, my first solo tours with Joe E Lee around Texas and Oklahoma, and I watched him every night because solo, he was
one of the greatest performers I've ever seen. What made him so great just his delivery, the way he you know, he rocked, and yet he could play the most tender ballad and he sang so beautifully. He was just such a great presence. You know, he's like Bruce. He's like a cowboy version of Bruce. You know, he was our Bruce, you know.
Yeah, and for the kids at home, that's Bruce Springsteen. Yeah yeah, You've been on stage with them quite a few times, I think, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, we saw Little Stephen last night. That was cool. Was that right?
Yeah?
Yeah, he was at Jesse's trip. So yeah, yeah, and uh, you know, and so being in Austin and having my daughter. I remember when Maya turned one, I turned thirty one, and I decided at that point, I remember it was it was kind of traumatic birthday for me. I smoked too much pot and kind of wanked it off, and it's kind of like, you know, left the party and kind of, you know, walking down the street wondering what
the fuck, you know, what's going on? You know. But I decided that at that point that I was going to get serious about writing songs, you know, because I'd always written short stories and screenplays and treatments, and so I'd always written, and I always had this idea that songs should be like many movies, you know, and so that's what I set out to do.
How did you do that? How did you sit how do well, maybe you didn't sit down. How did you say one day, I'm going to write, I'm going to write different kinds of songs. What what happened?
I wasn't being included in the band I was in at the time was Rank and File. There were two brothers, very talented songwriters in Great August. But I wasn't being like encouraged to do anything other than to be in the band as a rhythm guitar player. There's no Body My Fault.
Old Austin City clip and yeah, yeah, you see the brothers, and then there's this I'm there for a very very handsome guy with the guitar.
And so I wasn't. But I was never we were never encouraged as like a band, like let's work on this song as a band, you know, let's be a band. And yet we had always kind of promised ourselves that that's what we were going to be, you know, it was a band. And so at a certain point when the Brothers, we were playing with Loan Justice in California, and Loan Justice was starting to blow up, and we hadn't made our second record yet, and it did fairly well, but it wasn't blowing up like Loan.
Justice was, you know, yeah they had that first album, really.
Yeah, And so the brothers kind of started to look at pinpoint reasons why this wasn't happening, and I was the most obvious choice. So they got I wasn't good enough as a guitar player. I wasn't playing country guitar. I was playing a Les Paull Junior and a Marshall House attack, you know, and so like they're going, you know, it doesn't fit, and so I said, well, I'm not that and I don't want to be that, and so I went off and I remember all the way back
from California. I drank a bottle of whiskey and I listened to Foggy Notion by the Velvet Underground over and over and over, and that's the only song. I listened to the all the way home for about twenty hours, you know, and I said, this is what I want my band to sound like. And I got home and I called my brother Javier, and Javier, at the time was working in a restaurant washing dishes. I said, I want, let's do a band, you know, let's make a band.
We were going to ask Nicky Beat of the Widows to be our drummer, and we had all these plans. It took Halveer a year to get to Austin, but when he did, we started the True Believers and that began. Javier had all the songs, but I started to write. You know. The first song I wrote was this I was like already thirty two maybe. And the first song I wrote was the Rain Won't Help You when It's over. And then I wrote five Hearts Breaking and all those other songs that ended up on my solo record.
Yeah, how did were you the kind of person you just made yourself sit down every day and I'm going to write or no, when it was when the spirit.
I'm wait, too lazy for that, Yeah, I wait. You know it's funny because when I did start to write, they just flowed out like a waterfall. Man. It was crazy, you know. It was like a title wave of songs. I could sit anywhere we'd be late night, just hanging out after hours, and pick up a guitar and the song would come out.
Would you immediately write it down? Did you know from chord.
I lost a lot of songs. Oh yeah, but you know a lot of them did stick with me and they became those albums.
You know, well, those are some pretty good songs to start with.
They're not bad, no, some of them, Okay.
Not at all. The first song you put on this album, on your new album, yeah, of songs is John Conquest. So I wanted you to talk a bit about that.
Well. John Conquest was a song I do with my band Buick McCain. We were out of Austin and we were just a very loud, kind of southern version of the Dolls or something, and there was a critic there, rock music critic, I should say, journalists by the name of John Conquiz He's from England, but he only loved country music and stuff and he loved. Prior to me and making my first soulo record, I had a big band,
fifteen pieces. It was the Yell Hundreds or other orchestra, you know, So I had backup singers, keyboard, is horn, section three, two drummers.
Do you make that work as a working musician, And.
Well, that's what I would do with man. I would. I would set up a gig and I'd say, then just send out, call up my friends, We're going to play at the Hole in the wall. Ten I got a gig. Come you know, it's no rehearsal. We're all going to improvise. When we got on stage, these players were amazing. They were the best, the best jazz players in town, the best Latin percussionists in town, you know, best guitar players. I had all kinds of really wonderful musicians.
And these counts would show up sometimes fifteen, sometimes five, whatever, you know, and I would just start playing little riffs and you know, like gravity falling down again. That song was totally improvised as a song.
Really yeah, I mean, you've always got good riffs in your songs. I don't think of you as like a jazz guy particular, No not, but you know you can you can kick it off.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just simple. It was all very simple. Those songs were like, you know, like I always thought of them like nursery rhymes. You know. I thought that was really important to kind of get these like you know, like Eno put a Straw on her Baby, you know that that song of ENO's. You know, I just love it because it's a it is a nursery rhyme, you know it really I think it's an old Welsh or
something necessary. But I just loved it. And and that's kind of like what I wanted to do with my songs, you know. I just wanted to tell stories. And then as I started to write more, I realized this was a way for me to really kind of make that movie but with music.
You know, and your songs are very very visual. Yeah, I mean I think you know, one of my favorites of yours is of course Swallows or San Juan. Yeah, can you tell me a bit about that song.
I wrote that with Chuck Prophet and we were making Real Animal, Yeah, and we and I told him the story when I was a kid, the school trip was always the San Juan Capistrano, you know, to watch the swallows return to San Juan, right, And so we were talking about and I told him that I had once drawn the fountain where all the swallows would come to and and it went on an award at some little art show and on into the beach, and so we took it from there and he had he had the
roll in the mud and the clay, which I loved.
Yeah, it's such a I mean, people know the story because it's an old expression, return like the swallows to San Juan Capistrano, But it's such a different song. It's such a like a lot of your songs. It's about a lot of your songs. It's about departure and trying to come back and wondering whether you can come back.
That song was about trying to get back to the roots of what we loved, you know, guitars and and rock and roll. You know, that was seemed to be somewhat fading at the time, you know, at least in our eyes, you know, But.
It hasn't picked up much since. I would say that. I'm sorry, rock and roll hasn't picked up too much sense either.
There's a lot of young bands out there that are great. Star Crawler I love, they're amazing. Henry Cash and his group is just incredible. Errow, you know, the singer, and they're just amazing. I love their energy. There's a band and I'm gonna de Spits. I think they're called It from Austin, and they're also managed by my manager. But they're young girls who just I mean, they're vicious. Man. They're so good, and they've got the energy and the spirit. You know.
Do you do you think the radio or sort of broader culture is going to come around to that music now?
I don't believe so. I think that now we have become so separated from humanity. It seems like, you know, the beautiful parts of humanity, the expression that that music gave us at one point, I don't hear anymore. Maybe it's because I don't have those ears anymore. I'm not twenty, I'm not fifteen sixteen listening to Dylan records and Tim Harden records and Tim Buckley records and you know that kind of stuff. But I just I don't know. I just don't feel it like I used to.
Your career really went through the nineties up to Man under the Influence, which is just a great, great album, and you do a few songs from that on this record. Can you tell me about the making of that record, because that was just before you got sick.
Right, that was the last record I made before I became ill.
We had you known you had happy Titus?
No, not adopts see at that point? Now, okay, oh maybe you know it's maybe I did. Because the way what happened was I was touring extensively and I suddenly came home was very, very tired, just exhausted and nauseous. I couldn't. I We're touring with Jimmy Dale Gilmore on the West Coast, and one night after we had been in Boulder, Colorado, we saw Paul Westerberg and Patty Smith at some radio conference in Boulder, and then drove all the way to baff In, Alberta. And I was sick
all the way. And when I got to baff I couldn't play the gig. And I never not, you know, I was not that kind of guy. We played no matter what. And then we got to Vancouver and I tried to play it. I only lasted a few songs and I went to a friend. A friend took me to his doctor, and at that time they didn't really know what epsey was, you know, they called it non A and m B. But he didn't even say that at that point. He just thought that I was exhausted
and took so I canceled the next gig. We made it all the way down to the coat down to San Diego, down the coast, and when I got home, I was very ill and my friends told me I should go see a friend of his who would he thinks it could help me. And he told me that he thought I had something wrong with my liver. And I went to this old Mexican doctor on the East side who told me, you're just getting old, he said,
you know. But they did blood tests, you know, And I remember it was like the next day after the blood tests that the nurse called me and said, the doctor really needs to speak to you now. And he's the one that told me I had non A and on B.
You said, at least I'm not cure, at least now. Now now you'd be taking drugs and you'd be fine.
Yeah, oh good, No.
So but you were on so you got on the list for a New Liver.
I never did, really, I did not want to go to that route. So I thought there was alternatives. And what I did was I found Tibetan medicine. I found a group of monks that were traveling through Houston, and I went to see him. They had a doctor with them, and right away, you know, Tibetan doctors, they take your pulse, they read your tongue, and they read your urine. And he told me, because you don't have cancer, and don't be afraid, you're going to make this. You know, you're
going to make it through this. But I was very weak man. I got really sick, you know. And then when I went to my and then he introduced me to another Tibetan doctor, doctor Dekey, and she kept me alive for years through Tibetan medicine. I couldn't take the interfere on anymore. It was killing me. Yeah, and a Tibetan medicine kept me alive.
What was the treatment.
It's a it's a very you know, various like these little brown medicine balls kind of like that looked like mud dirt. They got a little straw they got they have minerals and even some precious stone in them sometimes, you know, and stuff, and I would take those and meditate and it was a practice. I did the medicine Buddha practice, you know.
And then how long did that take for you to feel better?
I'd say it took It took a little while, because you know, when you take herbs, they don't work like Western medicine. It's not immediate. It takes a while to build up in your system. And it did eventually, and I was able to go back on the road and just keep myself alive but not drinking, take it, trying to take care of myself, you know.
And your Western doctors at that point, were they opposed to this.
No, they were fine as long as I was getting better. So my doctor was a wonderful doctor who has supported me ever since I met him because of hepsie, but comes to all my shows, you know by its all records. He's a great guy.
That's what you want out of a doctor. So what, how's your liver now? Is it okay?
It's fine?
Wow?
I mean it's not a brand new liver, it's not a young man's liver, but it's yeah, but it's it keeps me upright, You.
Know, after this last break, we'll be back with the rest of Bruce Headlam's conversation with Alejandro Escovito. We're back with the rest of the conversation.
After you got sick and you came back, you started making albums with, you know, some of the people who really influenced you. You did an album in two thousand and six with John Klee, who you love first from What the Velvet Underground? Yeah, what was that like?
You know, I still get kind of giddy of thinking about it because it was John sent in one of the first songs on the tribute record, the port View of the record. He's send in a song called she Doesn't Live Here Anymore in.
A beautiful song.
Oh my god, what a version he did. And so we were doing a tribute to Sterling Morrison, who I also knew from Austin, and Sterling had passed away, and we were doing like a memorial permit one of the South by Southwest conferences, and John came and I got the string section together for him, and we did Paris nineteen nineteen, We did Sister Ray, and we did all these cool songs, you know, And when we were doing a sound check for that gig. I said, I heard you have a studio at your home. He goes, no,
I got rid of studio. And I said, well, why'd you get rid of your studio? Goes, I hate musicians. He said, oh that's cool, you know. I said, well, listen, would you help me make a record? And right away he said yes. And I had known John from playing with Judy and Island here in New York, you know, because we were managed by Jane Friedman like John was, you know, and we would play a lot of gigs together. But at that time John was a very different person, you know, and he was kind of well, he was
intimidating to me, you know. He says, big man with a big voice, drinking brandy and just being kind of wild, you know. And I didn't really get close to him in those days. You know. We'd go over his place and stuff, but I was always just going to fly on the walk on a kid, you know. And then when I asked him we had a gig in La and I went to La, he said said yes, said we had a meeting, and he told me I want three things from you. I want you to sound strong,
as inspired as you ever have been. And I want you to go as deeper than you've ever been about this record, you know. And so the first song I wrote was that song of Vita's Lullaby about my mom and dad. My dad died during that course of COVID, you know, and even though I had been you know, studying Buddhist script and preparing myself for a lot of things, when my father passed away, it was devastating, you know.
And so I wrote that song about them because they always danced, as I told you earlier, and so a Vita's Lullaby is about him dancing with her somewhere else, you know, some another place was your mother. She was still alive.
Her, she was still alive, okay, but my dad was.
You know, a huge influence on me. So that was the first song I wrote. And then the other songs were all followed suit you know. They were all kind of about that experience.
You know, and I did did He He liked the songs. He liked the songs. He thought you'd gone deeper.
I think that, Uh, at the time, it seemed like a you know, at the time, it seemed.
Like it surprises me. He said that, because I think of him as such a not a songwriter about feelings. He's such an intellectually intimidating figure.
Oh John, Yes, yeah, absolutely, so.
It surprises me that he did say no, you need to go deeper.
And you know what was funny is that, you know, I told you I had been kind of intimidated by him, right, but when we made the record, he was like an older brother. It's like I always felt like I had his arm around my shoulder, going, you're cool, you know, is this what you want? You know, give me more
of that, you know. And the record began very differently for us because like where you Are was a piano and I was sitting near with my acoustic and start playing, and he would he would respond to whatever I was playing, you know. He's such a great improviser, you know, So we wrote, we wrote like that, you know, and the record was recorded like that. At first, it was just piano and acoustic guitar and my voice, you know, and then we built the album all around that, you know,
which is kind of backwards for making records. Usually it's like you get the rhythm section down and you get the band down, and then the singer goes in and re records his vocals. A lot of times, you know, whatever, and you put everything else on top of that. But this was different, and it was a really interesting way to work, and I loved it because it was so I needed that kind of support system because I was still very, very shy, and I still had a lot of fear.
You know, really hepatize because you were you were fifteen years into your solo career at this point. What was the what was the fear?
I had the feeling that you know, Bobby Newarth once told me, he says, as artists were all just afraid that someone's going to suss us out to be hacks, you know, and I think I'm still living with that. You know. I'd grown up in an environment which was never very you know, the confirmation wasn't there when I was a kid. You know, I was never told I could do anything, you know, and the school system was such in those days that you know, they even changed
my name. They wouldn't pronounce my name. I was Alex for many years, and I hated it just because the teacher refused to, you know, even try to pronounce my name Alandro, you know, and me represented everything that was wrong with society, and you know, the racial thing.
Were there a lot of Mexican kids in your class.
Not a lot, but some, yeah, yeah, And so you know, Mexican kids were always and black kids and poor white kids were always just kind of led to the machine shop, the woods shop, you know, just to be worker aunts, you know. And so we were never encouraged to be lawyers, doctors and such so you know it, or filmmakers or filmmakers. And that's why these dreams were so important.
You know, were those dreams your parents supported?
No?
Now why was that? Because your your parents sound like your father sounds like such a romantic figure.
And I think because my brother, my older brothers had been musicians and they saw what you know, they would go to their shows, but my brothers played in supper clubs. You know. It was that time, you know, yeah, sixties, early sixties, like fifties. So they loved, you know, my brother they love of course, they adored my older brothers, you know. And I was a seventh kid out of thirteen,
so I was kind of lost in the shuffle. I was kind of an invisible kid and just never seemed to be able to do anything that impressed my parents. You know.
Did that change you mentioned your father died. It really changed really when he died, was he he.
Was supportive, you know. And when I played on the record, you know, I did this record, We've made this play called by the Hand of the Father, which was a story of five different men born in the turn the century in Mexico and chronicles their journey across the border and all the things they did to work and support their families and such. You know. When the album was finally finished and I had my brother Pete, I wrote a song for him to sing on the record, you know.
And when I finally played the album, my dad had this little boombox he would always listen into, you know, and he was kind of put it in the corner and he just turned the chair around from all of us and he just listened to the album and he played it all the way through, turned around and I
was watching him listen, you know, checking him out. He turned around, just kind of smiled, and then he hit play again and listened to it all one more time, all the way through, and then he turned around and told me, he says, you finally got the beat right, he said, So that was that was a big compliment for him, you know. So yeah, you know, it wasn't like I think my mom only saw me play maybe once or twice, you know.
Did they But they support us.
I mean they helped us, gave it. They helped the true believers get their first van, you know, to tours. But I didn't have that like, you know, that push or that kind of reckoning that you're an artist and you know you're free to go to move on and do what you want to do. You know.
It a struggle, which is interesting because you've done just so many interesting things in your career. A couple of years ago, you revisited the idea of crossing the.
Border with the crossing.
Yeah, with the Crossing, and then released a Spanish version and there's Italian songs on it. You've done. You seem quite fearless, and I would have guessed you'd have had parents saying the whole time, you can do anything, you can do anything. Where does that know? Where does that come from?
Defiance? I think more than anything, you know, there was always a sense that I wasn't going to be told what to do, and that I wasn't going to be pigeonholed into any sort of box. You know, I wasn't just a Chicano. I wasn't just a Mexican American, you know. I didn't want to be defined by race and culture. You know. I wanted to be my own person. And I think that the fearlessness just comes from which is a wonderful little gadget to have in your toolbox if
you're a musician. You know, just came from wanting to do I heard it all, like you know, it was a broad spectrum of things that I drew from, you know, from Mexican music to the Velvet Underground to you know, Coltrane to Smoking Robinson to it was all there, you know, and I ate it all up and I wanted it and how can I make this work? And I wasn't like, you know, because I started so late. I wasn't like a musician's musician or anything, you know. I could barely
play guitar. I learned to write songs by basically taking apart Dylan songs and Ian Hunter songs and John Kale songs and just kind of reconstructing them, you know. But all those guys that I admired were fearless in my eyes, Lou Reed, John Klee, Judy Nylon, you know, from Judy. I learned so much about just being able to stand up and say this is me and this is what I do. And I'm proud of what I do, and you know, take it.
Or leave it, you know, Can you do that now?
Yeah? Yeah, I'm not afraid anymore.
No, was there a time that changed.
It took a long time. Man. You know, it's funny to say that now, because, like I just told you, I'm going to be seventy four, but I was maybe fifty or so when I finally learned how to say no to people. Oh really, you know I always wanted to kind of like you know, you know, I had this therapist. He told me his his thing was based on l Ron Early l Ron Hubbard and Buddhism as
a Buddhist right, but it was truth seeking, right. And he says, you know, I feel like taking you by the call and just throwing you up against the wall right now. I said, lie. He goes, because you lie, you won't tell me the truth. I said, I don't lie. He goes, why you lying? I go, I don't lie.
He goes, why are lying? I go, Well, you know it's something I started to break down, you know, well, and it came down to like, I don't want to hurt other people's feelings, right, And he goes, well, you know, the responsibility is not yours, you know, it's theirs. The truth is there for them to digest in whatever way they're going to. They could be hurt, they could be pissed off, be angry at you, but that's not your problem, you know. And I took those words to heart. M hmm.
You know, you grew up number seven in a family of thirteen, you you probably learned to get along.
You have to. There's no other way. You know, my brother lived. You know, we were in bunk beds and sleeping on the floor and wherever, you know, in the car. If your brother was bugging you, I'd go I sleep
in the backyard or whatever. You know. Yeah, so like, yeah, you know, it's like it was a tight fit thirteen kids, and you know we didn't all live together at one time, but there was always a lot of kids, you know, sure, and my dad and mom were did their you know, my mom and dad because of their interest in culture and music, they love bars and they'd love to go
out dancing. So like growing up, we spent a lot of nights out in the car, locked up with our pajamas on while they went into these dance halls in Texas and people fighting and making love and you know whatever against the car the kids wake up. I was the oldest usually and trying to calm down my brothers and sisters, you know, until they came. Yes, it's an odd, odd childhood.
Yeah. You then worked with Tony Visconti, who of course did a lot of those t rex Owie those albums. What did you what did you get from him?
I'll tell you his story it. So initially I was supposed to work with Glenn John's and Chuck and I chuckoff and I went out to he lived in Ec de Provence, and we went out and visited him as villa that he lives in, and we spent some time with him. But we didn't see on what was the record should be, and so we decided not to worry with Glenn, and I called up being Ralphine, who was ahead of am I and Blue Note at the time, and told him, you know, I don't think this is
going to work. And so, you know, it's funny because then the record company was telling me that we didn't have the songs. But we had written every song that was on the album. We had that album in tuck. We thought we thought we were ready, and so they told me that no, we don't hear it, and you need to go back and write. So I called up Being Hunter and Ian Hunter said, well, come on out, show me your songs, you know. So I came out here and was.
That the first time you'd ever met him or had you known him before?
I met him before, yeah, because he was also on that Portfitlio record, the tribute record. So and we listened to all the songs and it was amazing. You know. We'd go down to the basement and I would plan the songs and he would He would is basically say these are great songs. And so the only lesson that he said I need to tell you is that just don't let the record company fuck with you, you know.
And he taught me this other trick about when they record, like how to hold the mic and really perform thing. And and so then Ian said, well what about Tony? I said, oh man, that would be amazing. So Tony flew out to Chicago and saw sound check and didn't realize that we were kind of rocked more than we you know, was on records, you know. So he loved that, you know, says we want to make we should make
a rock and roll record, you know. And we had the songs and we went out recorded the studio in Lexington, Kentucky, and I just loved it, man, and it was great. And so we made three records together. We made Real Animal, Street Songs and Big Station together and you know, like Street Songs of Love was written in front of an audience, you know. In Austin. We took on a residency of two months. So we'd play like every Tuesday night. I'd
call the band in. I'd have a verse or chorus titles sometimes, and we took Austin Motel was our green room across the street. We went back over and I'd come out and play what little I had to the audience, first acoustically, and then David, my guitar David Pokingham and my guitar player would come out and we do together. Then the band would come and we'd jam on it a little bit and then to play the rest of
our set songs we knew and stuff. But we'd always got kind of do like two or three ideas a week right, and so then the audience began to build, and South Austin was really hip at that time. It was really cool. So I started to kind of take characters that were happening things, situations that were happening around me. Those became the songs, and by the end of it we had a full album. Tony came, We did pre production for a week. Then Tony played with us on
the last of those Tuesday nights. We got in the van, went on a month long tour, ended up at the door of the studio in Lexington, and I swear we were so tight man. We just played that album just like that.
Well, this is what I mean by fearless. You get up in front of an Austin crowd and just say here's a fragment, and yeah, you're gonna watch they watch you build.
Yeah.
Is it important to have an audience that will that will join you in something like that? Could you've done that in New York or a different place or was that Austin?
I think that's an Austin thing. People always told me that the kind of things that happened in Austin don't happen anywhere else. You know, in those days especially so I think part of it was that, you know, Austin was always such a community that supported its artists in whatever fashion, you know. I mean, Joe Eally made one of the first kind of techno country records ever, you know, and people loved it, you know, high Res I think
it was called. But you know, so like they've always been accepting of every transformation that I went through.
That's amazing. Yeah, I do want to come back to one thing you mentioned, which is you didn't want to just be known as a Chicano, a Mexican songwriter, and it is true in this in the music business, certainly. I think of Lost Lobos, which is a band that can do almost anything, but they're always called the Chicano band from East La. Do you think it's it is limiting in this business if people that when people see you, they go, oh, well, we know what this is.
When my album with These Hands came out on Raiko disc, you know, they were pushing all the radio promoters were pushing for my record to be played on the radio. The response from most of the radio people was we already have one Mexican band, we don't need another, which was Los Lobos. We can't pronounce his name, how do you expect us to play his music? You know? So yeah, you know, and I didn't want to change my name,
you know, as I told you. You know, in my song is there's a lot of reference to my name. It's weird, but not my name. But so you know the name, you know, especially on the Crossings, there's that scene with Texas Ranger where the ranger says, what kind of we back name is that? What kind of spick
name is that? And that really happened to me in Eagle Pass, Texas, you know, where I was introduced to a gentleman who was the next Texas Ranger and I said, my friend said, uncle John, this is Alejandro said, what kind of spick name is that? You know?
So how old were you when that happened?
Oh? I was in the True Believers. Yeah, so those kind of things have always to me, you know, and I didn't want to change my name. I'm proud of my culture, proud of my race, I'm proud of my lineage. I'm proud of you know, my family, you know, but my family has you know, if you were to do documentary on the Escovedo family, man, it's all over the place, you know, And I think we owe that to my mom and dad really the music. And my mom was
so in the movies and films. She would take me to see films all the time since I was toddler, you know, so I was constantly being dragged to films. You know. She loved Marlon Brando, she loved James Dean, and she loved Montgomery Cliffs. So we would go see all those movies all the time. And she loved books, and you know, we were reading you know, Hemingway and Steinberg. She loved those guys, so we read those very early on.
And it was because of her, you know. So as difficult as my relationship with my mother was, I owe the world probably, but I certainly wasn't going to be defined by because I'll be honest with you, I'm not really in the Chicono world. I'm not accept you know. They don't buy my records, right, they don't come to see me play. And yet in my eyes, I have spoken as much about the chicon experience as anybody has, you know. But yet, because I don't sing in Spanish and I love the Stooges as much as I.
Love very eclectic taste.
Yeah, so you know, we got to play. We got asked to play a salsa festival because of my name in San Jose, California. And the first song we did, because we knew that we weren't there they, we knew they had made a mistake. We played I Want to Be Your Dog for about fifteen minutes.
That'll show them.
Yeah, that'll show. Of course it lost. You'll never do that.
Yeah, they're gonna make the check out to Alex That's what they're gonna do. All right. This was just such a treat and such an honor. Thank you so much. Well, everybody should listen to this album. It's just and it's a great primer on your early days and it'll drive all people back to those great albums. So thank you so much.
Well, I appreciate you having me thinks.
Oh no, no, an absolute joy you go. I wish it were mine. I would live in here if I could. Thank you so much. And when you successfully resisted playing the guitar the whole time, thank you. See that's power, all right, Thank you again.
Thank you to.
Alijandro Escavito for talking about his career and a bit about the making of his new album Echo Dancing. You can hear all of our favorite tracks from Aleandro Escavito on a playlist in the show notes for this episode, and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record pot. You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Record. Broken Record is produced by Leo Rose, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer
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