Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Alejandro Escavito is a Texas born singer songwriter who comes
Speaker 2: from a rich family of musicians, including his niece Sheila
Speaker 2: e E. Of course for Escavito, Alejandro started out in
Speaker 2: the pioneering in San Francisco punk band The Nuns in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five. From there, he moved to New York
Speaker 2: and then eventually settled in Austin, where he started playing
Speaker 2: rootsy rock with bands like Rank and File as well
Speaker 2: as The True Believers. In March, Alejandro Escavito released his
Speaker 2: latest album, Echo Dancing, a retrospective of his career that
Speaker 2: spans five decades. Inspired by artists like Brian Nino and Suicide,
Speaker 2: Alejandro Escavito both reimagines and re records his previous work
Speaker 2: on this album. On today's episode, Bruce Hedlam talks to
Speaker 2: Alejandro Escavito about his late start in music, his upbringing
Speaker 2: in San Antonio and Huntington Beach, where he'd sometimes pretend
Speaker 2: to be Hawaiian to avoid Askacans, along with some great
Speaker 2: stories about his swings through Austin and San Francisco, like
Speaker 2: being on the bill for the Sex Pistols final show
Speaker 2: and what makes those scenes so special? Alejandro also discussed
Speaker 2: is why he's tried not to foreground his Chicano identity,
Speaker 2: even as it's been front and center, for better and
Speaker 2: worse through much of his personal life. This is broken
Speaker 2: record liner notes for the digital age.
Speaker 1: I'm justin Mitchman.
Speaker 2: Here's Bruce Hedlum's conversation with Alejandro Escovito.
Speaker 1: For people who don't know your well, they might even
Speaker 1: know your career, recording career starting in ninety two.
Speaker 3: Or so well, from my solo records, your solo.
Speaker 1: Records, But people who don't know your your pre solo work,
Speaker 1: I mean, you were in the La punk scene, the
Speaker 1: New York punk scene, you San Francisco, San Francisco punk scene,
Speaker 1: you open for sex Show, and of course you know
Speaker 1: you're a legend in Austin, so you've you've been part
Speaker 1: of all these great music scenes. So this new album
Speaker 1: Echo Dancing, you revisit songs not just from your own
Speaker 1: solo work, but before that.
Speaker 3: Yes, I went all the way back. I mean I
Speaker 3: recorded a Nun song. Yeah, a version of a song
Speaker 3: called Lazy which Jennifer used to come out and sing
Speaker 3: solo on piano, and we did a beautiful version. But
Speaker 3: we're saving it for When I went to Italy to record,
Speaker 3: I did eighteen songs and fourteen made the album and
Speaker 3: four are being held back for a covers record. And
Speaker 3: those songs were lazy. I did a Kevin Kenny song
Speaker 3: called Another Scarlet Butterfly. I did a song by Tom
Speaker 3: Waits called on the Nickel, and I did Leonard Cohen's
Speaker 3: Alexandra Leaving.
Speaker 4: I love Alexander Lee's So Beautiful Man, It's classic. That
Speaker 4: was from that. The ten songs, Yeah, I can't remember
Speaker 4: that record. Great record, one of my favorites of all time. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I just love that record.
Speaker 3: So anyway, we did those and I'm working on collecting
Speaker 3: now all the songs I'll be doing for a covers record.
Speaker 3: I know I'm going to do a Scott Walker song
Speaker 3: called Duchess. You know, do you know the song?
Speaker 1: I don't know thet so on.
Speaker 3: I think, and you know things like that. A songwriter
Speaker 3: out of Austin or Texas called Will Johnson. I'm doing
Speaker 3: one of his. I'm doing a John Doe song, you know,
Speaker 3: things like that.
Speaker 1: That's great, But why why revisit these songs? Now? What
Speaker 1: was going on that you wanted to look back on
Speaker 1: some of your own work, and we record it.
Speaker 3: Honestly, I think that ever since, you know, I was
Speaker 3: stricken with a disease in about two thousand and three.
Speaker 3: It was it was a hepatitis C. They told me
Speaker 3: I had a year to live if I didn't get
Speaker 3: a liver transplant, and it was a very dire time.
Speaker 3: Two years of not working, you know, and I'd been
Speaker 3: hitting the road hard all my life, you know, and
Speaker 3: so it gave me a chance to really kind of
Speaker 3: sit back finally and reflect. And in doing so, I
Speaker 3: thought so much about the bands that i'd been in,
Speaker 3: the Nuns rank and file, especially Judy Nylon here in
Speaker 3: New York, and everything I learned along the way. And
Speaker 3: so the next album I made, I co wrote with
Speaker 3: Chuck Prophet, and it was the story of all those bands.
Speaker 3: It was called Real Animals. And it seems that from
Speaker 3: that point on it's been a matter of just kind
Speaker 3: of kind of looking back at how to tell the story,
Speaker 3: you know, continue to tell the story. And I just
Speaker 3: felt that at this point, I'll be seventy four next year,
Speaker 3: it was a good time to to really kind of
Speaker 3: just go back and play around with these songs, you know,
Speaker 3: because I've never felt like, you know, the thing about
Speaker 3: making a record is once you record that album, by
Speaker 3: the time the record's released, let's say six months later
Speaker 3: or so, you're already on to new things. You're singing
Speaker 3: those songs differently. They might even be arranged differently. You've
Speaker 3: decided that instead of a full band, maybe this song
Speaker 3: only requires you know, cello and violin or something or piano, so,
Speaker 3: you know. And they had done a tribute album for
Speaker 3: me when I was ill. It was called Porvida, and
Speaker 3: Calexico had done a version of a song called Wave.
Speaker 3: And when I got on the plane to go to Italy,
Speaker 3: I began to listen to that record just for inspiration.
Speaker 3: And suddenly my intention had shifted from going to Italy
Speaker 3: to make a completely improvised record to re revisiting these
Speaker 3: older songs like John cale had done, like Colexico had done.
Speaker 3: That record had thirty two artists. Licinda had been on it,
Speaker 3: you know, Steve are a lot of great people. Ian Hunter.
Speaker 3: So I went back. I thought, this is cool man,
Speaker 3: you know, let's go back. And I already had started
Speaker 3: to work with the song sensitive Boys is just a
Speaker 3: piano piece, and so when I got to the recording
Speaker 3: studio in Italy. We began with the Sensitive Boys and
Speaker 3: then Wave, the Glexico version kind of or inspired version.
Speaker 1: I should say, So you were covering cover versions of you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you in particular about bury Me,
Speaker 1: which was a standout on your first solo record, Ryot Gravity.
Speaker 1: You did that in the nineties when you were I
Speaker 1: think you were around forty when you disd your first
Speaker 1: solo outs. Yep, so you mentioned you were You're just
Speaker 1: you're about to turn seventy four. Where were you in
Speaker 1: that when Gravity came out and you were singing bury
Speaker 1: Me for the first time.
Speaker 3: My life has been a lot of tests in my life.
Speaker 3: I've been tested and at that point, my wife had
Speaker 3: committed suicide and I was raising a nine year old
Speaker 3: and a six month old girl, two girls, and it
Speaker 3: was just a very difficult time and the burden of
Speaker 3: that grief and working through the grief. The only method
Speaker 3: I really had outside of therapy was writing songs, you know,
Speaker 3: and bury Me was kind of like this almost kind
Speaker 3: of like an expression of saying, I wish that had
Speaker 3: happened to me instead of you. I wish the roles
Speaker 3: had been reversed, you know, and to be buried with,
Speaker 3: you know, the lies I've told and a rusted sword
Speaker 3: and my bully suit and my favorite picture of you.
Speaker 3: We're all kind of like things, you know, symbolized a
Speaker 3: lot of the things that were happening with me at
Speaker 3: the time. And yet at the same time, I had
Speaker 3: no choice but to raise my children, you know, so
Speaker 3: it was tough. You know.
Speaker 1: Do you think your children got you through that? In
Speaker 1: some ways?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? You know, it was probably the only thing that
Speaker 3: got me through that, you know, because it wasn't you know,
Speaker 3: nothing was working other than that, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: like alcohol. I mean, obviously I threw myself and I
Speaker 3: was drinking too much and stuff, but the main thing
Speaker 3: was just taking care of the kids and making that happen.
Speaker 1: What's that like to revisit that song? Now? How did
Speaker 1: you How did you want to record it this time?
Speaker 3: I just wanted it to be rougher, you know, just
Speaker 3: kind of more honest, more, you know, a little more
Speaker 3: primitive version of the song. And you know, it started
Speaker 3: out as kind of like a blue blues he kind
Speaker 3: of almost like a country blues thing, you know, And
Speaker 3: I remember that when you know.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask you if you can show me
Speaker 1: what the country blues going to do? That? All right,
Speaker 1: that's okay, But.
Speaker 3: You know, at that time bury me was actually when
Speaker 3: Rick was producing Johnny Cash's records, the solo records. You know,
Speaker 3: they actually that song got thrown into the pile of songs.
Speaker 3: It didn't make it, but it was one of the
Speaker 3: songs that you know, I threw it for that. I
Speaker 3: would have loved to have heard Johnny Cash sing that song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it might have been a little lower than your version.
Speaker 1: Most likely you wanted it. You say you wanted it rougher.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty dark song originally and pretty.
Speaker 3: Start kind of like a symphonic thing about it. There
Speaker 3: was something just kind of like you know, with the
Speaker 3: synthesizer and stuff like that, you know, and now I
Speaker 3: just kind of wanted like to be a little kind
Speaker 3: of just tougher a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm interested. Do you have your children listened
Speaker 1: to it?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: What did they think?
Speaker 3: You know, It's funny because my kids were the first
Speaker 3: ones to hear my songs during that period of time
Speaker 3: gravity thirteen years with these hands, those first kind of
Speaker 3: trilogy of that period of time, which was like, you know,
Speaker 3: obviously guilt Gravity was the darkest one. Thirteen years was
Speaker 3: kind of like a more kind of melancholy look at
Speaker 3: what had happened, you know, and then with these sounds
Speaker 3: was kind of like coming out of this phase of grief, you.
Speaker 1: Know, living when you recorded the Boston album, So were
Speaker 1: you working at home at that point?
Speaker 3: I was working at Waterloo Records. I was a record
Speaker 3: store clerk.
Speaker 1: Are you kidding? I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: Yeah for many years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, would you take your breaks and pull up
Speaker 1: a guitar?
Speaker 3: You know. It was funny because when the record came out,
Speaker 3: I was selling my own record.
Speaker 1: Anybody came in and said, man, whatever's playing, just take
Speaker 1: it off, hey.
Speaker 3: And of course I'd also accept the returns when they
Speaker 3: came in.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, not really, but.
Speaker 1: I'll bet you kicked up a fist. You grew up
Speaker 1: in a musical family, yes, sir, Yeah, your father was
Speaker 1: your father full time musician?
Speaker 3: No, he was, he was. He thought of himself as
Speaker 3: a crooner, had sang in big bands in the thirties
Speaker 3: and forties and also had worked and you know, my
Speaker 3: father was born in Mexico in Salt Deal nineteen oh
Speaker 3: seven he was born and crossed the borders when he
Speaker 3: was twelve looking for his parents, who had moved on
Speaker 3: into Texas to find work. So he sang in work
Speaker 3: camps and played guitar a little bit and sang I love.
Speaker 3: My father loved rock and roll, aroun chettas and big
Speaker 3: band music. That was this thing. And my mom was
Speaker 3: more kind of cultured and sophisticated. She had grown up
Speaker 3: in San Marcos and graduated from college there and then
Speaker 3: went to work at the Pentagon in Washington, DC as
Speaker 3: a secretary. And so she went out and saw you know,
Speaker 3: jazz and you know comedians. She told me she saw
Speaker 3: Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce and all those guys, you know,
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. So, yeah, she was hipper and
Speaker 3: my kind of very sophisticated, beautiful woman, really kind of
Speaker 3: starlet beauty, you know. And so I had those two
Speaker 3: kind of things always playing in my head, you know,
Speaker 3: big band music and more orchestrated kind of you know,
Speaker 3: big band music on my mom's side, sophisticated jazz. And
Speaker 3: then she came in my first Winton Kelly record, you know,
Speaker 3: and like my dad was really into ronchetta's and conjuntos
Speaker 3: and things like that.
Speaker 1: You know, is that where you get your love of strings?
Speaker 1: You've always had such great strings.
Speaker 3: That and I think that also two records were my
Speaker 3: templates when I first started went Sola Were a Street
Speaker 3: House was by Lou Reed and Paris nineteen nineteen by
Speaker 3: John Klee, And those two records kind of gave me
Speaker 3: the idea. And also Ronnie Lane's record and Slim Chants,
Speaker 3: because Ronnie was living in Austin and so I played
Speaker 3: in his band and it was a big string band,
Speaker 3: but mostly like violin, more like fiddle and mandolins and
Speaker 3: banjos and acoustic guitars and stuff, but really cool. It
Speaker 3: was so great to learn from Ronnie. You know, I
Speaker 3: loved Ronnie. I was a big Faces fan.
Speaker 1: When you were a kid. Was that your taste like
Speaker 1: British Invasion? That kind of music?
Speaker 3: My taste of music began with Elvis and the Big Bopper.
Speaker 3: I love Solomon Burke and Fats Domino was a hero
Speaker 3: of mine.
Speaker 1: Were you a piano player?
Speaker 3: No, I was not a musician.
Speaker 1: I mean everybody in your family was a musician. People
Speaker 1: who know you know your brothers were in jazz bands,
Speaker 1: big bands, Your niece is Sheila E from Princess Great Band. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you didn't play till much later.
Speaker 3: I didn't start playing until I was twenty four.
Speaker 1: What happened? Your dad gave you a guitar when you
Speaker 1: were young.
Speaker 3: I had a guitar very early. I took it apart
Speaker 3: to paying it, gave it to me, never put it
Speaker 3: back together. Have My brother picked it up, my younger brother, Haavier,
Speaker 3: who was a much better guitar player than I am,
Speaker 3: and he picked it up and he really took to it,
Speaker 3: and you know, he was kind of more into the guitar.
Speaker 3: But I was a surfer. I was a baseball player.
Speaker 3: I loved surfing. I was you know, we grew up
Speaker 3: in Huntington Beach, California, and.
Speaker 1: You were born in San Antonio, right, and then moved
Speaker 1: to California.
Speaker 3: We moved when I was seven, six or seven, and
Speaker 3: we lived in Orange County, first in Orange, California, and
Speaker 3: then Huntington Beach.
Speaker 1: What was the surfing scene like then.
Speaker 3: It's a very different surfing scene. It was not an
Speaker 3: integrated or diverse surfancy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It was purely kind of you know, Anglo white, chalky
Speaker 3: kind of guys. You know, and the Mexican kids and
Speaker 3: the surfers always battled. So I was somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 3: I had long air and surf like my hero David Nueva.
Speaker 3: So the surfers thought I was Hawaiian. He passed his Hawaiian,
Speaker 3: so I would be Hawaiian in order not to get
Speaker 3: my ass kicked from time to time. So yeah, that's
Speaker 3: what you know.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking every Mexican at the border now should just
Speaker 1: be yeah, I'm Hawaiian.
Speaker 3: That would be a good one. I think that would do.
Speaker 1: That would do that. I think you figured it out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, that was the deal. And uh and
Speaker 3: then there was a great record store on Main Street
Speaker 3: in Hunton Beach. This older hippie guy took a liking
Speaker 3: to me and would turn me onto records, you know,
Speaker 3: and he was really he was an anglophile. So Yardbirds,
Speaker 3: pretty Things, Kinks, all those great records, you know, Lord
Speaker 3: Sutch and you do these odd things. And he turned
Speaker 3: me on to my you know, when the Roxy music
Speaker 3: album came out and all the Mantahope records, you know
Speaker 3: from Wildlife from the very first one, turned me onto
Speaker 3: all the Bowie, all the t rex All that stuff
Speaker 3: came to him, and I just became mesmerized by that
Speaker 3: music and that look and that style.
Speaker 1: What was it about the music that grabbed you so much?
Speaker 1: The guitars, yeah.
Speaker 3: The loud ronson and guys like Jimmy Page I loved
Speaker 3: and you know Keith, of course, you always love Keith.
Speaker 3: You gotta love Keith. You know, he's just the greatest
Speaker 3: rhythm player, you know. And so I took a real
Speaker 3: liking to end the clothes, you know, and the fashion
Speaker 3: was a big.
Speaker 1: Did you have any growing up? Did you like Mexican
Speaker 1: music growing up through your father?
Speaker 3: You know, It's funny because the punk rock was a rebellion.
Speaker 3: A lot of people thought rock and roll was basically
Speaker 3: a rebellion against your parents, right, But I mean I
Speaker 3: personally did not have anything against the music that my
Speaker 3: parents listened to. I loved it. You know. It was
Speaker 3: familial and it was warm and it felt like home,
Speaker 3: you know. So every time I hear that kind of music,
Speaker 3: I think of my parents and being younger at the
Speaker 3: house where my parents would dance at the drop of
Speaker 3: a hat, you know, they just start and my dad
Speaker 3: would sing to my mom all the time, you know.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like in a restaurant. We'd be in a restaurant
Speaker 3: and so you built out this tune to her, you know,
Speaker 3: this love song and everyone would clap after it was cool.
Speaker 1: That amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And was he a guitar player as well?
Speaker 3: My father was a guitar player, but a very rough
Speaker 3: guitar player. Like, yeah, I took after my dad.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now you went to San Francis. I just so
Speaker 1: I get this right. You were interested in film, you
Speaker 1: were a big film buff.
Speaker 3: Well here's yeah. So then when you know the new
Speaker 3: wave German, new Wave, French, new wave, Italian neo realism,
Speaker 3: I took to that, right, So we wanted to be
Speaker 3: a filmmaker. I wasn't playing guitar. I was checking out
Speaker 3: every band I could, buying every record, I could, reading
Speaker 3: every Enemy Sounds, Melody Maker out, I could Cream Rolling Stone,
Speaker 3: all that, just totally, you know, just digesting everything, you know.
Speaker 3: And then we decided to run away, my girlfriend and
Speaker 3: I from Hollywood where I was living. This is after
Speaker 3: seeing the Dolls and the Stooges and Patty Smith for
Speaker 3: the first time, and you know these great bands Roxy
Speaker 3: and Mott and you know Slade and you know, just
Speaker 3: incredible music. And we decided we'd run away to San Francisco,
Speaker 3: and we took off one night hitch high to San
Speaker 3: Francisco from Hollywood, and it was there that my friend
Speaker 3: and I were going to make a movie about the
Speaker 3: shittiest band in the world. And since we thought we
Speaker 3: looked so cool, we thought we'd play the band because
Speaker 3: we couldn't play, so we'll be the band in the movie.
Speaker 3: And that band became the Nuns, and then the Nuns
Speaker 3: you know, by it, I don't know, it just kind
Speaker 3: of happened to take off in San Francisco. It was
Speaker 3: a good time. Punk rock embraced us, and we weren't
Speaker 3: really punk rock. We just couldn't play, you know. And uh,
Speaker 3: but we looked cool and we seemed to fit into
Speaker 3: the scene and we became a big band in San Francisco.
Speaker 3: But we never toured or anything. You know. You say
Speaker 3: you warmed up for show at Winterland.
Speaker 1: Yes, So what was that like for you?
Speaker 3: It was like it was like a circus gone bad,
Speaker 3: you know, Yeah, like suddenly the elephants or stampede and
Speaker 3: then the animals have been cut loose from the cage's Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was crazy, you know, it was. It was a spectacle.
Speaker 3: It wasn't rock and roll. It was a spectrum.
Speaker 1: Did you like their music?
Speaker 3: I loved the sex Mistles the first the forty fives
Speaker 3: were great. Yeah, the album was great.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I loved them, But they weren't a band anymore by
Speaker 3: the time they got to Frisco. They were They weren't
Speaker 3: playing together or anything. Really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And did you think of yourself as a band
Speaker 1: by that point? You started as a non band, yeah,
Speaker 1: came the band.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then shortly after the sex Mistle show, you know,
Speaker 3: Sid came to our house that night, hung out with us,
Speaker 3: and then we said, you know, he invited us to
Speaker 3: go to London, and then we went to New York.
Speaker 3: We came to New York to play and that was
Speaker 3: seventy eight.
Speaker 1: That was that at his urging or you just did
Speaker 1: that on your own.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, it wasn't We.
Speaker 1: Had Sid Vicious suggested you go to New York.
Speaker 3: We were ready to go somewhere and New York was
Speaker 3: the only place that we felt comfortable.
Speaker 1: Did you like Sid Vicious?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was great, It's great. He was sweet man.
Speaker 3: He was a good kid. He loved rock, and roll,
Speaker 3: and the problem I think was more that he became
Speaker 3: a caricature and that character caricature killed him, you know.
Speaker 3: But I don't think that, you know, he was he
Speaker 3: was kind of pushed in that direction, you know, by management,
Speaker 3: by fans, you know.
Speaker 1: But I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's a strange story.
Speaker 1: So what was New York like for you? Then?
Speaker 3: You know, I never wanted you know, like in high school,
Speaker 3: people were always I want to go. I can't wait
Speaker 3: to go to Paris and you know, London and wherever,
Speaker 3: you know, And I just wanted to come to New
Speaker 3: York because the Velvet Underground were from New York, the
Speaker 3: dolls were from New York, the Young Rascals were from
Speaker 3: New York, you know, and all the great doop of
Speaker 3: the fifties was from New York, it seemed. And I
Speaker 3: just really wanted to come. And for me, it was
Speaker 3: we moved to Chelsea. We lived a rock and roll
Speaker 3: dream kind.
Speaker 1: Of you know, what was the Chelsea like at that point?
Speaker 3: It was still kind of like it was in the
Speaker 3: sixties and stuff. You know, there's still a lot of characters.
Speaker 3: Charles James, the great clothing designers still lived there, lived
Speaker 3: there for years, never paid rent, you know, standing would
Speaker 3: let him get by for whatever favors. To Francesco Scavulu,
Speaker 3: I think out a studio downstairs and just all these
Speaker 3: great people in and out, you know. And I met
Speaker 3: so many great people, you know. I met Ki Kid,
Speaker 3: Creole and the Coconuts. So he hang out with the
Speaker 3: same people that I hung out. So there was a
Speaker 3: big studio apartment that this woman lived in and she
Speaker 3: would host like, you know, little soirees during the day
Speaker 3: and all these people would come over. It was great.
Speaker 3: It was you know, it was all everything I had
Speaker 3: thought about when I watched Warhol films and yeah, Midnight
Speaker 3: Cowboy and whatever. You know. It was a dream kind
Speaker 3: of come true. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Not a lot of people watch Midnight Cowboy and say, wow,
Speaker 1: no I want some of that.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the kind of band that we were
Speaker 3: and the kind of people were kind of lent them
Speaker 3: lent themselves to that.
Speaker 1: Okay, what kind of what kind of people were you?
Speaker 3: Uh? We were fuck ups with guitars. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: we really were. We had no future, as they say,
Speaker 3: you know, we we were just kids who I personally
Speaker 3: was different than the rest of them. Of course, We
Speaker 3: were all different, but you know, we dabbled in drugs.
Speaker 3: You know, we were we were heathen like you know,
Speaker 3: and you know we're from San Francisco. San Francisco in
Speaker 3: those days was pretty wild. You know, it's Babylon. You know.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back with more from Alejandro Escavito.
Speaker 1: After the break.
Speaker 2: We're back with more from Alejandro Escavito.
Speaker 1: So was there one point in which you thought, I
Speaker 1: want to make music that's going to last. I want
Speaker 1: to get past this.
Speaker 3: It didn't happen until my daughter Maya was born and
Speaker 3: I was living in Austin because when I moved to
Speaker 3: Austin said, I wasn't surrounded by like performance artists and
Speaker 3: fake jazz and this and that. I was surrounded by
Speaker 3: hardcore songwriters right Towns, Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Jimmie Dale, Gilmour,
Speaker 3: Joe Eely, Butch Hancock and one of the greatest of
Speaker 3: them all. You know, just these amazing songwriters.
Speaker 1: You know, were you going out and seeing them at night?
Speaker 1: Did you know them?
Speaker 3: Oh? You could see them in a backyard Towns at
Speaker 3: a barbecue. You know. It was that kind of place,
Speaker 3: you know, and I just soaked it in. I just
Speaker 3: really loved it. You know, I was home. I was
Speaker 3: back in Texas. I was surrounded by these incredible genius
Speaker 3: songwriters and they took to me. And you know, my
Speaker 3: first solo tours with Joe E Lee around Texas and Oklahoma,
Speaker 3: and I watched him every night because solo, he was
Speaker 3: one of the greatest performers I've ever seen. What made
Speaker 3: him so great just his delivery, the way he you know,
Speaker 3: he rocked, and yet he could play the most tender
Speaker 3: ballad and he sang so beautifully. He was just such
Speaker 3: a great presence. You know, he's like Bruce. He's like
Speaker 3: a cowboy version of Bruce. You know, he was our Bruce,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and for the kids at home, that's Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, You've been on stage with them quite a
Speaker 1: few times, I think, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we saw Little Stephen last night. That was cool.
Speaker 3: Was that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was at Jesse's trip. So yeah, yeah, and uh,
Speaker 3: you know, and so being in Austin and having my daughter.
Speaker 3: I remember when Maya turned one, I turned thirty one,
Speaker 3: and I decided at that point, I remember it was
Speaker 3: it was kind of traumatic birthday for me. I smoked
Speaker 3: too much pot and kind of wanked it off, and
Speaker 3: it's kind of like, you know, left the party and
Speaker 3: kind of, you know, walking down the street wondering what
Speaker 3: the fuck, you know, what's going on? You know. But
Speaker 3: I decided that at that point that I was going
Speaker 3: to get serious about writing songs, you know, because I'd
Speaker 3: always written short stories and screenplays and treatments, and so
Speaker 3: I'd always written, and I always had this idea that
Speaker 3: songs should be like many movies, you know, and so
Speaker 3: that's what I set out to do.
Speaker 1: How did you do that? How did you sit how
Speaker 1: do well, maybe you didn't sit down. How did you
Speaker 1: say one day, I'm going to write, I'm going to
Speaker 1: write different kinds of songs. What what happened?
Speaker 3: I wasn't being included in the band I was in
Speaker 3: at the time was Rank and File. There were two brothers,
Speaker 3: very talented songwriters in Great August. But I wasn't being
Speaker 3: like encouraged to do anything other than to be in
Speaker 3: the band as a rhythm guitar player. There's no Body
Speaker 3: My Fault.
Speaker 1: Old Austin City clip and yeah, yeah, you see the brothers,
Speaker 1: and then there's this I'm there for a very very
Speaker 1: handsome guy with the guitar.
Speaker 3: And so I wasn't. But I was never we were
Speaker 3: never encouraged as like a band, like let's work on
Speaker 3: this song as a band, you know, let's be a band.
Speaker 3: And yet we had always kind of promised ourselves that
Speaker 3: that's what we were going to be, you know, it
Speaker 3: was a band. And so at a certain point when
Speaker 3: the Brothers, we were playing with Loan Justice in California,
Speaker 3: and Loan Justice was starting to blow up, and we
Speaker 3: hadn't made our second record yet, and it did fairly well,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't blowing up like Loan.
Speaker 1: Justice was, you know, yeah they had that first album, really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so the brothers kind of started to look
Speaker 3: at pinpoint reasons why this wasn't happening, and I was
Speaker 3: the most obvious choice. So they got I wasn't good
Speaker 3: enough as a guitar player. I wasn't playing country guitar.
Speaker 3: I was playing a Les Paull Junior and a Marshall
Speaker 3: House attack, you know, and so like they're going, you know,
Speaker 3: it doesn't fit, and so I said, well, I'm not
Speaker 3: that and I don't want to be that, and so
Speaker 3: I went off and I remember all the way back
Speaker 3: from California. I drank a bottle of whiskey and I
Speaker 3: listened to Foggy Notion by the Velvet Underground over and
Speaker 3: over and over, and that's the only song. I listened
Speaker 3: to the all the way home for about twenty hours,
Speaker 3: you know, and I said, this is what I want
Speaker 3: my band to sound like. And I got home and
Speaker 3: I called my brother Javier, and Javier, at the time
Speaker 3: was working in a restaurant washing dishes. I said, I want,
Speaker 3: let's do a band, you know, let's make a band.
Speaker 3: We were going to ask Nicky Beat of the Widows
Speaker 3: to be our drummer, and we had all these plans.
Speaker 3: It took Halveer a year to get to Austin, but
Speaker 3: when he did, we started the True Believers and that began.
Speaker 3: Javier had all the songs, but I started to write.
Speaker 3: You know. The first song I wrote was this I
Speaker 3: was like already thirty two maybe. And the first song
Speaker 3: I wrote was the Rain Won't Help You when It's over.
Speaker 3: And then I wrote five Hearts Breaking and all those
Speaker 3: other songs that ended up on my solo record.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did were you the kind of person you
Speaker 1: just made yourself sit down every day and I'm going
Speaker 1: to write or no, when it was when the spirit.
Speaker 3: I'm wait, too lazy for that, Yeah, I wait. You
Speaker 3: know it's funny because when I did start to write,
Speaker 3: they just flowed out like a waterfall. Man. It was crazy,
Speaker 3: you know. It was like a title wave of songs.
Speaker 3: I could sit anywhere we'd be late night, just hanging
Speaker 3: out after hours, and pick up a guitar and the
Speaker 3: song would come out.
Speaker 1: Would you immediately write it down? Did you know from chord.
Speaker 3: I lost a lot of songs. Oh yeah, but you
Speaker 3: know a lot of them did stick with me and
Speaker 3: they became those albums.
Speaker 1: You know, well, those are some pretty good songs to
Speaker 1: start with.
Speaker 3: They're not bad, no, some of them, Okay.
Speaker 1: Not at all. The first song you put on this album,
Speaker 1: on your new album, yeah, of songs is John Conquest.
Speaker 1: So I wanted you to talk a bit about that.
Speaker 3: Well. John Conquest was a song I do with my
Speaker 3: band Buick McCain. We were out of Austin and we
Speaker 3: were just a very loud, kind of southern version of
Speaker 3: the Dolls or something, and there was a critic there,
Speaker 3: rock music critic, I should say, journalists by the name
Speaker 3: of John Conquiz He's from England, but he only loved
Speaker 3: country music and stuff and he loved. Prior to me
Speaker 3: and making my first soulo record, I had a big band,
Speaker 3: fifteen pieces. It was the Yell Hundreds or other orchestra,
Speaker 3: you know, So I had backup singers, keyboard, is horn,
Speaker 3: section three, two drummers.
Speaker 1: Do you make that work as a working musician, And.
Speaker 3: Well, that's what I would do with man. I would.
Speaker 3: I would set up a gig and I'd say, then
Speaker 3: just send out, call up my friends, We're going to
Speaker 3: play at the Hole in the wall. Ten I got
Speaker 3: a gig. Come you know, it's no rehearsal. We're all
Speaker 3: going to improvise. When we got on stage, these players
Speaker 3: were amazing. They were the best, the best jazz players
Speaker 3: in town, the best Latin percussionists in town, you know,
Speaker 3: best guitar players. I had all kinds of really wonderful musicians.
Speaker 3: And these counts would show up sometimes fifteen, sometimes five, whatever,
Speaker 3: you know, and I would just start playing little riffs
Speaker 3: and you know, like gravity falling down again. That song
Speaker 3: was totally improvised as a song.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, I mean, you've always got good riffs in
Speaker 1: your songs. I don't think of you as like a
Speaker 1: jazz guy particular, No not, but you know you can
Speaker 1: you can kick it off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, just simple. It was all very simple.
Speaker 3: Those songs were like, you know, like I always thought
Speaker 3: of them like nursery rhymes. You know. I thought that
Speaker 3: was really important to kind of get these like you know,
Speaker 3: like Eno put a Straw on her Baby, you know
Speaker 3: that that song of ENO's. You know, I just love
Speaker 3: it because it's a it is a nursery rhyme, you
Speaker 3: know it really I think it's an old Welsh or
Speaker 3: something necessary. But I just loved it. And and that's
Speaker 3: kind of like what I wanted to do with my songs,
Speaker 3: you know. I just wanted to tell stories. And then
Speaker 3: as I started to write more, I realized this was
Speaker 3: a way for me to really kind of make that
Speaker 3: movie but with music.
Speaker 1: You know, and your songs are very very visual. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think you know, one of my favorites
Speaker 1: of yours is of course Swallows or San Juan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you tell me a bit about that song.
Speaker 3: I wrote that with Chuck Prophet and we were making
Speaker 3: Real Animal, Yeah, and we and I told him the
Speaker 3: story when I was a kid, the school trip was
Speaker 3: always the San Juan Capistrano, you know, to watch the
Speaker 3: swallows return to San Juan, right, And so we were
Speaker 3: talking about and I told him that I had once
Speaker 3: drawn the fountain where all the swallows would come to
Speaker 3: and and it went on an award at some little
Speaker 3: art show and on into the beach, and so we
Speaker 3: took it from there and he had he had the
Speaker 3: roll in the mud and the clay, which I loved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such a I mean, people know the story
Speaker 1: because it's an old expression, return like the swallows to
Speaker 1: San Juan Capistrano, But it's such a different song. It's
Speaker 1: such a like a lot of your songs. It's about
Speaker 1: a lot of your songs. It's about departure and trying
Speaker 1: to come back and wondering whether you can come back.
Speaker 3: That song was about trying to get back to the
Speaker 3: roots of what we loved, you know, guitars and and
Speaker 3: rock and roll. You know, that was seemed to be
Speaker 3: somewhat fading at the time, you know, at least in
Speaker 3: our eyes, you know, But.
Speaker 1: It hasn't picked up much since. I would say that.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, rock and roll hasn't picked up too much
Speaker 1: sense either.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of young bands out there that are great.
Speaker 3: Star Crawler I love, they're amazing. Henry Cash and his
Speaker 3: group is just incredible. Errow, you know, the singer, and
Speaker 3: they're just amazing. I love their energy. There's a band
Speaker 3: and I'm gonna de Spits. I think they're called It
Speaker 3: from Austin, and they're also managed by my manager. But
Speaker 3: they're young girls who just I mean, they're vicious. Man.
Speaker 3: They're so good, and they've got the energy and the spirit.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Do you do you think the radio or sort of
Speaker 1: broader culture is going to come around to that music now?
Speaker 3: I don't believe so. I think that now we have
Speaker 3: become so separated from humanity. It seems like, you know,
Speaker 3: the beautiful parts of humanity, the expression that that music
Speaker 3: gave us at one point, I don't hear anymore. Maybe
Speaker 3: it's because I don't have those ears anymore. I'm not twenty,
Speaker 3: I'm not fifteen sixteen listening to Dylan records and Tim
Speaker 3: Harden records and Tim Buckley records and you know that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. But I just I don't know. I
Speaker 3: just don't feel it like I used to.
Speaker 1: Your career really went through the nineties up to Man
Speaker 1: under the Influence, which is just a great, great album,
Speaker 1: and you do a few songs from that on this record.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me about the making of that record,
Speaker 1: because that was just before you got sick.
Speaker 3: Right, that was the last record I made before I
Speaker 3: became ill.
Speaker 1: We had you known you had happy Titus?
Speaker 3: No, not adopts see at that point? Now, okay, oh
Speaker 3: maybe you know it's maybe I did. Because the way
Speaker 3: what happened was I was touring extensively and I suddenly
Speaker 3: came home was very, very tired, just exhausted and nauseous.
Speaker 3: I couldn't. I We're touring with Jimmy Dale Gilmore on
Speaker 3: the West Coast, and one night after we had been
Speaker 3: in Boulder, Colorado, we saw Paul Westerberg and Patty Smith
Speaker 3: at some radio conference in Boulder, and then drove all
Speaker 3: the way to baff In, Alberta. And I was sick
Speaker 3: all the way. And when I got to baff I
Speaker 3: couldn't play the gig. And I never not, you know,
Speaker 3: I was not that kind of guy. We played no
Speaker 3: matter what. And then we got to Vancouver and I
Speaker 3: tried to play it. I only lasted a few songs
Speaker 3: and I went to a friend. A friend took me
Speaker 3: to his doctor, and at that time they didn't really
Speaker 3: know what epsey was, you know, they called it non
Speaker 3: A and m B. But he didn't even say that
Speaker 3: at that point. He just thought that I was exhausted
Speaker 3: and took so I canceled the next gig. We made
Speaker 3: it all the way down to the coat down to
Speaker 3: San Diego, down the coast, and when I got home,
Speaker 3: I was very ill and my friends told me I
Speaker 3: should go see a friend of his who would he
Speaker 3: thinks it could help me. And he told me that
Speaker 3: he thought I had something wrong with my liver. And
Speaker 3: I went to this old Mexican doctor on the East
Speaker 3: side who told me, you're just getting old, he said,
Speaker 3: you know. But they did blood tests, you know, And
Speaker 3: I remember it was like the next day after the
Speaker 3: blood tests that the nurse called me and said, the
Speaker 3: doctor really needs to speak to you now. And he's
Speaker 3: the one that told me I had non A and
Speaker 3: on B.
Speaker 1: You said, at least I'm not cure, at least now.
Speaker 1: Now now you'd be taking drugs and you'd be fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh good, No.
Speaker 1: So but you were on so you got on the
Speaker 1: list for a New Liver.
Speaker 3: I never did, really, I did not want to go
Speaker 3: to that route. So I thought there was alternatives. And
Speaker 3: what I did was I found Tibetan medicine. I found
Speaker 3: a group of monks that were traveling through Houston, and
Speaker 3: I went to see him. They had a doctor with them,
Speaker 3: and right away, you know, Tibetan doctors, they take your pulse,
Speaker 3: they read your tongue, and they read your urine. And
Speaker 3: he told me, because you don't have cancer, and don't
Speaker 3: be afraid, you're going to make this. You know, you're
Speaker 3: going to make it through this. But I was very
Speaker 3: weak man. I got really sick, you know. And then
Speaker 3: when I went to my and then he introduced me
Speaker 3: to another Tibetan doctor, doctor Dekey, and she kept me
Speaker 3: alive for years through Tibetan medicine. I couldn't take the
Speaker 3: interfere on anymore. It was killing me. Yeah, and a
Speaker 3: Tibetan medicine kept me alive.
Speaker 1: What was the treatment.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a very you know, various like these
Speaker 3: little brown medicine balls kind of like that looked like
Speaker 3: mud dirt. They got a little straw they got they
Speaker 3: have minerals and even some precious stone in them sometimes,
Speaker 3: you know, and stuff, and I would take those and
Speaker 3: meditate and it was a practice. I did the medicine
Speaker 3: Buddha practice, you know.
Speaker 1: And then how long did that take for you to
Speaker 1: feel better?
Speaker 3: I'd say it took It took a little while, because
Speaker 3: you know, when you take herbs, they don't work like
Speaker 3: Western medicine. It's not immediate. It takes a while to
Speaker 3: build up in your system. And it did eventually, and
Speaker 3: I was able to go back on the road and
Speaker 3: just keep myself alive but not drinking, take it, trying
Speaker 3: to take care of myself, you know.
Speaker 1: And your Western doctors at that point, were they opposed
Speaker 1: to this.
Speaker 3: No, they were fine as long as I was getting better.
Speaker 3: So my doctor was a wonderful doctor who has supported
Speaker 3: me ever since I met him because of hepsie, but
Speaker 3: comes to all my shows, you know by its all records.
Speaker 3: He's a great guy.
Speaker 1: That's what you want out of a doctor. So what,
Speaker 1: how's your liver now? Is it okay?
Speaker 3: It's fine?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 3: I mean it's not a brand new liver, it's not
Speaker 3: a young man's liver, but it's yeah, but it's it
Speaker 3: keeps me upright, You.
Speaker 2: Know, after this last break, we'll be back with the
Speaker 2: rest of Bruce Headlam's conversation with Alejandro Escovito. We're back
Speaker 2: with the rest of the conversation.
Speaker 1: After you got sick and you came back, you started
Speaker 1: making albums with, you know, some of the people who
Speaker 1: really influenced you. You did an album in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six with John Klee, who you love first from
Speaker 1: What the Velvet Underground? Yeah, what was that like?
Speaker 3: You know, I still get kind of giddy of thinking
Speaker 3: about it because it was John sent in one of
Speaker 3: the first songs on the tribute record, the port View
Speaker 3: of the record. He's send in a song called she
Speaker 3: Doesn't Live Here Anymore in.
Speaker 1: A beautiful song.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, what a version he did. And so
Speaker 3: we were doing a tribute to Sterling Morrison, who I
Speaker 3: also knew from Austin, and Sterling had passed away, and
Speaker 3: we were doing like a memorial permit one of the
Speaker 3: South by Southwest conferences, and John came and I got
Speaker 3: the string section together for him, and we did Paris
Speaker 3: nineteen nineteen, We did Sister Ray, and we did all
Speaker 3: these cool songs, you know, And when we were doing
Speaker 3: a sound check for that gig. I said, I heard
Speaker 3: you have a studio at your home. He goes, no,
Speaker 3: I got rid of studio. And I said, well, why'd
Speaker 3: you get rid of your studio? Goes, I hate musicians.
Speaker 3: He said, oh that's cool, you know. I said, well, listen,
Speaker 3: would you help me make a record? And right away
Speaker 3: he said yes. And I had known John from playing
Speaker 3: with Judy and Island here in New York, you know,
Speaker 3: because we were managed by Jane Friedman like John was,
Speaker 3: you know, and we would play a lot of gigs together.
Speaker 3: But at that time John was a very different person,
Speaker 3: you know, and he was kind of well, he was
Speaker 3: intimidating to me, you know. He says, big man with
Speaker 3: a big voice, drinking brandy and just being kind of wild,
Speaker 3: you know. And I didn't really get close to him
Speaker 3: in those days. You know. We'd go over his place
Speaker 3: and stuff, but I was always just going to fly
Speaker 3: on the walk on a kid, you know. And then
Speaker 3: when I asked him we had a gig in La
Speaker 3: and I went to La, he said said yes, said
Speaker 3: we had a meeting, and he told me I want
Speaker 3: three things from you. I want you to sound strong,
Speaker 3: as inspired as you ever have been. And I want
Speaker 3: you to go as deeper than you've ever been about
Speaker 3: this record, you know. And so the first song I
Speaker 3: wrote was that song of Vita's Lullaby about my mom
Speaker 3: and dad. My dad died during that course of COVID,
Speaker 3: you know, and even though I had been you know,
Speaker 3: studying Buddhist script and preparing myself for a lot of things,
Speaker 3: when my father passed away, it was devastating, you know.
Speaker 3: And so I wrote that song about them because they
Speaker 3: always danced, as I told you earlier, and so a
Speaker 3: Vita's Lullaby is about him dancing with her somewhere else,
Speaker 3: you know, some another place was your mother. She was
Speaker 3: still alive.
Speaker 1: Her, she was still alive, okay, but my dad was.
Speaker 3: You know, a huge influence on me. So that was
Speaker 3: the first song I wrote. And then the other songs
Speaker 3: were all followed suit you know. They were all kind
Speaker 3: of about that experience.
Speaker 1: You know, and I did did He He liked the songs.
Speaker 1: He liked the songs. He thought you'd gone deeper.
Speaker 3: I think that, Uh, at the time, it seemed like
Speaker 3: a you know, at the time, it seemed.
Speaker 1: Like it surprises me. He said that, because I think
Speaker 1: of him as such a not a songwriter about feelings.
Speaker 1: He's such an intellectually intimidating figure.
Speaker 3: Oh John, Yes, yeah, absolutely, so.
Speaker 1: It surprises me that he did say no, you need
Speaker 1: to go deeper.
Speaker 3: And you know what was funny is that, you know,
Speaker 3: I told you I had been kind of intimidated by him, right,
Speaker 3: but when we made the record, he was like an
Speaker 3: older brother. It's like I always felt like I had
Speaker 3: his arm around my shoulder, going, you're cool, you know,
Speaker 3: is this what you want? You know, give me more
Speaker 3: of that, you know. And the record began very differently
Speaker 3: for us because like where you Are was a piano
Speaker 3: and I was sitting near with my acoustic and start playing,
Speaker 3: and he would he would respond to whatever I was playing,
Speaker 3: you know. He's such a great improviser, you know, So
Speaker 3: we wrote, we wrote like that, you know, and the
Speaker 3: record was recorded like that. At first, it was just
Speaker 3: piano and acoustic guitar and my voice, you know, and
Speaker 3: then we built the album all around that, you know,
Speaker 3: which is kind of backwards for making records. Usually it's
Speaker 3: like you get the rhythm section down and you get
Speaker 3: the band down, and then the singer goes in and
Speaker 3: re records his vocals. A lot of times, you know, whatever,
Speaker 3: and you put everything else on top of that. But
Speaker 3: this was different, and it was a really interesting way
Speaker 3: to work, and I loved it because it was so
Speaker 3: I needed that kind of support system because I was
Speaker 3: still very, very shy, and I still had a lot
Speaker 3: of fear.
Speaker 1: You know, really hepatize because you were you were fifteen
Speaker 1: years into your solo career at this point. What was
Speaker 1: the what was the fear?
Speaker 3: I had the feeling that you know, Bobby Newarth once
Speaker 3: told me, he says, as artists were all just afraid
Speaker 3: that someone's going to suss us out to be hacks,
Speaker 3: you know, and I think I'm still living with that.
Speaker 3: You know. I'd grown up in an environment which was
Speaker 3: never very you know, the confirmation wasn't there when I
Speaker 3: was a kid. You know, I was never told I
Speaker 3: could do anything, you know, and the school system was
Speaker 3: such in those days that you know, they even changed
Speaker 3: my name. They wouldn't pronounce my name. I was Alex
Speaker 3: for many years, and I hated it just because the
Speaker 3: teacher refused to, you know, even try to pronounce my
Speaker 3: name Alandro, you know, and me represented everything that was
Speaker 3: wrong with society, and you know, the racial thing.
Speaker 1: Were there a lot of Mexican kids in your class.
Speaker 3: Not a lot, but some, yeah, yeah, And so you know,
Speaker 3: Mexican kids were always and black kids and poor white
Speaker 3: kids were always just kind of led to the machine shop,
Speaker 3: the woods shop, you know, just to be worker aunts,
Speaker 3: you know. And so we were never encouraged to be lawyers,
Speaker 3: doctors and such so you know it, or filmmakers or filmmakers.
Speaker 3: And that's why these dreams were so important.
Speaker 1: You know, were those dreams your parents supported?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Now why was that? Because your your parents sound like
Speaker 1: your father sounds like such a romantic figure.
Speaker 3: And I think because my brother, my older brothers had
Speaker 3: been musicians and they saw what you know, they would
Speaker 3: go to their shows, but my brothers played in supper clubs.
Speaker 3: You know. It was that time, you know, yeah, sixties,
Speaker 3: early sixties, like fifties. So they loved, you know, my
Speaker 3: brother they love of course, they adored my older brothers,
Speaker 3: you know. And I was a seventh kid out of thirteen,
Speaker 3: so I was kind of lost in the shuffle. I
Speaker 3: was kind of an invisible kid and just never seemed
Speaker 3: to be able to do anything that impressed my parents.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Did that change you mentioned your father died. It really
Speaker 1: changed really when he died, was he he.
Speaker 3: Was supportive, you know. And when I played on the record,
Speaker 3: you know, I did this record, We've made this play
Speaker 3: called by the Hand of the Father, which was a
Speaker 3: story of five different men born in the turn the
Speaker 3: century in Mexico and chronicles their journey across the border
Speaker 3: and all the things they did to work and support
Speaker 3: their families and such. You know. When the album was
Speaker 3: finally finished and I had my brother Pete, I wrote
Speaker 3: a song for him to sing on the record, you know.
Speaker 3: And when I finally played the album, my dad had
Speaker 3: this little boombox he would always listen into, you know,
Speaker 3: and he was kind of put it in the corner
Speaker 3: and he just turned the chair around from all of
Speaker 3: us and he just listened to the album and he
Speaker 3: played it all the way through, turned around and I
Speaker 3: was watching him listen, you know, checking him out. He
Speaker 3: turned around, just kind of smiled, and then he hit
Speaker 3: play again and listened to it all one more time,
Speaker 3: all the way through, and then he turned around and
Speaker 3: told me, he says, you finally got the beat right,
Speaker 3: he said, So that was that was a big compliment
Speaker 3: for him, you know. So yeah, you know, it wasn't
Speaker 3: like I think my mom only saw me play maybe
Speaker 3: once or twice, you know.
Speaker 1: Did they But they support us.
Speaker 3: I mean they helped us, gave it. They helped the
Speaker 3: true believers get their first van, you know, to tours.
Speaker 3: But I didn't have that like, you know, that push
Speaker 3: or that kind of reckoning that you're an artist and
Speaker 3: you know you're free to go to move on and
Speaker 3: do what you want to do. You know.
Speaker 1: It a struggle, which is interesting because you've done just
Speaker 1: so many interesting things in your career. A couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, you revisited the idea of crossing the.
Speaker 3: Border with the crossing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with the Crossing, and then released a Spanish version
Speaker 1: and there's Italian songs on it. You've done. You seem
Speaker 1: quite fearless, and I would have guessed you'd have had
Speaker 1: parents saying the whole time, you can do anything, you
Speaker 1: can do anything. Where does that know? Where does that
Speaker 1: come from?
Speaker 3: Defiance? I think more than anything, you know, there was
Speaker 3: always a sense that I wasn't going to be told
Speaker 3: what to do, and that I wasn't going to be
Speaker 3: pigeonholed into any sort of box. You know, I wasn't
Speaker 3: just a Chicano. I wasn't just a Mexican American, you know.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to be defined by race and culture.
Speaker 3: You know. I wanted to be my own person. And
Speaker 3: I think that the fearlessness just comes from which is
Speaker 3: a wonderful little gadget to have in your toolbox if
Speaker 3: you're a musician. You know, just came from wanting to
Speaker 3: do I heard it all, like you know, it was
Speaker 3: a broad spectrum of things that I drew from, you know,
Speaker 3: from Mexican music to the Velvet Underground to you know,
Speaker 3: Coltrane to Smoking Robinson to it was all there, you know,
Speaker 3: and I ate it all up and I wanted it
Speaker 3: and how can I make this work? And I wasn't like,
Speaker 3: you know, because I started so late. I wasn't like
Speaker 3: a musician's musician or anything, you know. I could barely
Speaker 3: play guitar. I learned to write songs by basically taking
Speaker 3: apart Dylan songs and Ian Hunter songs and John Kale
Speaker 3: songs and just kind of reconstructing them, you know. But
Speaker 3: all those guys that I admired were fearless in my eyes,
Speaker 3: Lou Reed, John Klee, Judy Nylon, you know, from Judy.
Speaker 3: I learned so much about just being able to stand
Speaker 3: up and say this is me and this is what
Speaker 3: I do. And I'm proud of what I do, and
Speaker 3: you know, take it.
Speaker 1: Or leave it, you know, Can you do that now?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, I'm not afraid anymore.
Speaker 1: No, was there a time that changed.
Speaker 3: It took a long time. Man. You know, it's funny
Speaker 3: to say that now, because, like I just told you,
Speaker 3: I'm going to be seventy four, but I was maybe
Speaker 3: fifty or so when I finally learned how to say
Speaker 3: no to people. Oh really, you know I always wanted
Speaker 3: to kind of like you know, you know, I had
Speaker 3: this therapist. He told me his his thing was based
Speaker 3: on l Ron Early l Ron Hubbard and Buddhism as
Speaker 3: a Buddhist right, but it was truth seeking, right. And
Speaker 3: he says, you know, I feel like taking you by
Speaker 3: the call and just throwing you up against the wall
Speaker 3: right now. I said, lie. He goes, because you lie,
Speaker 3: you won't tell me the truth. I said, I don't lie.
Speaker 3: He goes, why you lying? I go, I don't lie.
Speaker 3: He goes, why are lying? I go, Well, you know
Speaker 3: it's something I started to break down, you know, well,
Speaker 3: and it came down to like, I don't want to
Speaker 3: hurt other people's feelings, right, And he goes, well, you know,
Speaker 3: the responsibility is not yours, you know, it's theirs. The
Speaker 3: truth is there for them to digest in whatever way
Speaker 3: they're going to. They could be hurt, they could be
Speaker 3: pissed off, be angry at you, but that's not your problem,
Speaker 3: you know. And I took those words to heart. M hmm.
Speaker 1: You know, you grew up number seven in a family
Speaker 1: of thirteen, you you probably learned to get along.
Speaker 3: You have to. There's no other way. You know, my
Speaker 3: brother lived. You know, we were in bunk beds and
Speaker 3: sleeping on the floor and wherever, you know, in the car.
Speaker 3: If your brother was bugging you, I'd go I sleep
Speaker 3: in the backyard or whatever. You know. Yeah, so like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like it was a tight fit thirteen kids,
Speaker 3: and you know we didn't all live together at one time,
Speaker 3: but there was always a lot of kids, you know, sure,
Speaker 3: and my dad and mom were did their you know,
Speaker 3: my mom and dad because of their interest in culture
Speaker 3: and music, they love bars and they'd love to go
Speaker 3: out dancing. So like growing up, we spent a lot
Speaker 3: of nights out in the car, locked up with our
Speaker 3: pajamas on while they went into these dance halls in
Speaker 3: Texas and people fighting and making love and you know
Speaker 3: whatever against the car the kids wake up. I was
Speaker 3: the oldest usually and trying to calm down my brothers
Speaker 3: and sisters, you know, until they came. Yes, it's an odd,
Speaker 3: odd childhood.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You then worked with Tony Visconti, who of course
Speaker 1: did a lot of those t rex Owie those albums.
Speaker 1: What did you what did you get from him?
Speaker 3: I'll tell you his story it. So initially I was
Speaker 3: supposed to work with Glenn John's and Chuck and I
Speaker 3: chuckoff and I went out to he lived in Ec
Speaker 3: de Provence, and we went out and visited him as
Speaker 3: villa that he lives in, and we spent some time
Speaker 3: with him. But we didn't see on what was the
Speaker 3: record should be, and so we decided not to worry
Speaker 3: with Glenn, and I called up being Ralphine, who was
Speaker 3: ahead of am I and Blue Note at the time,
Speaker 3: and told him, you know, I don't think this is
Speaker 3: going to work. And so, you know, it's funny because
Speaker 3: then the record company was telling me that we didn't
Speaker 3: have the songs. But we had written every song that
Speaker 3: was on the album. We had that album in tuck.
Speaker 3: We thought we thought we were ready, and so they
Speaker 3: told me that no, we don't hear it, and you
Speaker 3: need to go back and write. So I called up
Speaker 3: Being Hunter and Ian Hunter said, well, come on out,
Speaker 3: show me your songs, you know. So I came out
Speaker 3: here and was.
Speaker 1: That the first time you'd ever met him or had
Speaker 1: you known him before?
Speaker 3: I met him before, yeah, because he was also on
Speaker 3: that Portfitlio record, the tribute record. So and we listened
Speaker 3: to all the songs and it was amazing. You know.
Speaker 3: We'd go down to the basement and I would plan
Speaker 3: the songs and he would He would is basically say
Speaker 3: these are great songs. And so the only lesson that
Speaker 3: he said I need to tell you is that just
Speaker 3: don't let the record company fuck with you, you know.
Speaker 3: And he taught me this other trick about when they record,
Speaker 3: like how to hold the mic and really perform thing.
Speaker 3: And and so then Ian said, well what about Tony?
Speaker 3: I said, oh man, that would be amazing. So Tony
Speaker 3: flew out to Chicago and saw sound check and didn't
Speaker 3: realize that we were kind of rocked more than we
Speaker 3: you know, was on records, you know. So he loved that,
Speaker 3: you know, says we want to make we should make
Speaker 3: a rock and roll record, you know. And we had
Speaker 3: the songs and we went out recorded the studio in Lexington, Kentucky,
Speaker 3: and I just loved it, man, and it was great.
Speaker 3: And so we made three records together. We made Real Animal,
Speaker 3: Street Songs and Big Station together and you know, like
Speaker 3: Street Songs of Love was written in front of an audience,
Speaker 3: you know. In Austin. We took on a residency of
Speaker 3: two months. So we'd play like every Tuesday night. I'd
Speaker 3: call the band in. I'd have a verse or chorus
Speaker 3: titles sometimes, and we took Austin Motel was our green
Speaker 3: room across the street. We went back over and I'd
Speaker 3: come out and play what little I had to the audience,
Speaker 3: first acoustically, and then David, my guitar David Pokingham and
Speaker 3: my guitar player would come out and we do together.
Speaker 3: Then the band would come and we'd jam on it
Speaker 3: a little bit and then to play the rest of
Speaker 3: our set songs we knew and stuff. But we'd always
Speaker 3: got kind of do like two or three ideas a
Speaker 3: week right, and so then the audience began to build,
Speaker 3: and South Austin was really hip at that time. It
Speaker 3: was really cool. So I started to kind of take
Speaker 3: characters that were happening things, situations that were happening around me.
Speaker 3: Those became the songs, and by the end of it
Speaker 3: we had a full album. Tony came, We did pre
Speaker 3: production for a week. Then Tony played with us on
Speaker 3: the last of those Tuesday nights. We got in the van,
Speaker 3: went on a month long tour, ended up at the
Speaker 3: door of the studio in Lexington, and I swear we
Speaker 3: were so tight man. We just played that album just
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 1: Well, this is what I mean by fearless. You get
Speaker 1: up in front of an Austin crowd and just say
Speaker 1: here's a fragment, and yeah, you're gonna watch they watch
Speaker 1: you build.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is it important to have an audience that will that
Speaker 1: will join you in something like that? Could you've done
Speaker 1: that in New York or a different place or was
Speaker 1: that Austin?
Speaker 3: I think that's an Austin thing. People always told me
Speaker 3: that the kind of things that happened in Austin don't
Speaker 3: happen anywhere else. You know, in those days especially so
Speaker 3: I think part of it was that, you know, Austin
Speaker 3: was always such a community that supported its artists in
Speaker 3: whatever fashion, you know. I mean, Joe Eally made one
Speaker 3: of the first kind of techno country records ever, you know,
Speaker 3: and people loved it, you know, high Res I think
Speaker 3: it was called. But you know, so like they've always
Speaker 3: been accepting of every transformation that I went through.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah, I do want to come back to
Speaker 1: one thing you mentioned, which is you didn't want to
Speaker 1: just be known as a Chicano, a Mexican songwriter, and
Speaker 1: it is true in this in the music business, certainly.
Speaker 1: I think of Lost Lobos, which is a band that
Speaker 1: can do almost anything, but they're always called the Chicano
Speaker 1: band from East La. Do you think it's it is
Speaker 1: limiting in this business if people that when people see you,
Speaker 1: they go, oh, well, we know what this is.
Speaker 3: When my album with These Hands came out on Raiko disc,
Speaker 3: you know, they were pushing all the radio promoters were
Speaker 3: pushing for my record to be played on the radio.
Speaker 3: The response from most of the radio people was we
Speaker 3: already have one Mexican band, we don't need another, which
Speaker 3: was Los Lobos. We can't pronounce his name, how do
Speaker 3: you expect us to play his music? You know? So yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, and I didn't want to change my name,
Speaker 3: you know, as I told you. You know, in my
Speaker 3: song is there's a lot of reference to my name.
Speaker 3: It's weird, but not my name. But so you know
Speaker 3: the name, you know, especially on the Crossings, there's that
Speaker 3: scene with Texas Ranger where the ranger says, what kind
Speaker 3: of we back name is that? What kind of spick
Speaker 3: name is that? And that really happened to me in
Speaker 3: Eagle Pass, Texas, you know, where I was introduced to
Speaker 3: a gentleman who was the next Texas Ranger and I said,
Speaker 3: my friend said, uncle John, this is Alejandro said, what
Speaker 3: kind of spick name is that? You know?
Speaker 1: So how old were you when that happened?
Speaker 3: Oh? I was in the True Believers. Yeah, so those
Speaker 3: kind of things have always to me, you know, and
Speaker 3: I didn't want to change my name. I'm proud of
Speaker 3: my culture, proud of my race, I'm proud of my lineage.
Speaker 3: I'm proud of you know, my family, you know, but
Speaker 3: my family has you know, if you were to do
Speaker 3: documentary on the Escovedo family, man, it's all over the place,
Speaker 3: you know, And I think we owe that to my
Speaker 3: mom and dad really the music. And my mom was
Speaker 3: so in the movies and films. She would take me
Speaker 3: to see films all the time since I was toddler,
Speaker 3: you know, so I was constantly being dragged to films.
Speaker 3: You know. She loved Marlon Brando, she loved James Dean,
Speaker 3: and she loved Montgomery Cliffs. So we would go see
Speaker 3: all those movies all the time. And she loved books,
Speaker 3: and you know, we were reading you know, Hemingway and Steinberg.
Speaker 3: She loved those guys, so we read those very early on.
Speaker 3: And it was because of her, you know. So as
Speaker 3: difficult as my relationship with my mother was, I owe
Speaker 3: the world probably, but I certainly wasn't going to be
Speaker 3: defined by because I'll be honest with you, I'm not
Speaker 3: really in the Chicono world. I'm not accept you know.
Speaker 3: They don't buy my records, right, they don't come to
Speaker 3: see me play. And yet in my eyes, I have
Speaker 3: spoken as much about the chicon experience as anybody has,
Speaker 3: you know. But yet, because I don't sing in Spanish
Speaker 3: and I love the Stooges as much as I.
Speaker 1: Love very eclectic taste.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, we got to play. We got
Speaker 3: asked to play a salsa festival because of my name
Speaker 3: in San Jose, California. And the first song we did,
Speaker 3: because we knew that we weren't there they, we knew
Speaker 3: they had made a mistake. We played I Want to
Speaker 3: Be Your Dog for about fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: That'll show them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that'll show. Of course it lost. You'll never do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're gonna make the check out to Alex That's
Speaker 1: what they're gonna do. All right. This was just such
Speaker 1: a treat and such an honor. Thank you so much. Well,
Speaker 1: everybody should listen to this album. It's just and it's
Speaker 1: a great primer on your early days and it'll drive
Speaker 1: all people back to those great albums. So thank you
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 3: Well, I appreciate you having me thinks.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, an absolute joy you go. I wish
Speaker 1: it were mine. I would live in here if I could.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. And when you successfully resisted playing
Speaker 1: the guitar the whole time, thank you. See that's power,
Speaker 1: all right, Thank you again.
Speaker 3: Thank you to.
Speaker 2: Alijandro Escavito for talking about his career and a bit
Speaker 2: about the making of his new album Echo Dancing. You
Speaker 2: can hear all of our favorite tracks from Aleandro Escavito
Speaker 2: on a playlist in the show notes for this episode,
Speaker 2: and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the
Speaker 2: Broken Record pot. You can follow us on Twitter at
Speaker 2: Broken Record. Broken Record is produced by Leo Rose, with
Speaker 2: marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer
Speaker 2: is Ben Tolladay. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
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Speaker 1: Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.