We caught up with Alejandro Escovedo ahead of the release of Echo Dancing – his latest album in a legendary, genre-expansive career. Escovedo candidly discusses how painful personal experiences inform his songwriting, how he first picked up the guitar, why he prefers to play acoustic, and what makes Austin, Texas a great town for songwriters.
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The Acoustic Guitar Podcast theme music is composed by Adam Perlmutter and performed for this episode by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers.
This episode is hosted by Nick Grizzle and Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, produced by Tanya Gonzalez, and directed and edited by Joey Lusterman. Executive producers are Lyzy Lusterman and Stephanie Campos Dal Broi.
The Acoustic Guitar Podcast is produced by the team at Acoustic Guitar magazine, including:
Special thanks to our listeners who support the show on Patreon.
We caught up with Alejandro Escovedo ahead of the release of Echo Dancing – his latest album in a legendary, genre-expansive career. Escovedo candidly discusses how painful personal experiences inform his songwriting, how he first picked up the guitar, why he prefers to play acoustic, and what makes Austin, Texas a great town for songwriters.
Support the show:
Additional Resources:
The Acoustic Guitar Podcast theme music is composed by Adam Perlmutter and performed for this episode by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers.
This episode is hosted by Nick Grizzle and Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, produced by Tanya Gonzalez, and directed and edited by Joey Lusterman. Executive producers are Lyzy Lusterman and Stephanie Campos Dal Broi.
The Acoustic Guitar Podcast is produced by the team at Acoustic Guitar magazine, including:
Special thanks to our listeners who support the show on Patreon.
I go back to some of these songs that I wrote through some very, very difficult times, you know, and they're hard to sing in public, but I feel like they're necessary to sing because they do connect with people and it's good for me from time to time to do it too. Thank you, welcome to the Acoustic Guitar Podcast.
Nick Grizzle:I'm your host, nick Grizzle, and for this episode, my co-host, jeffrey Pepper Rogers, and I catch up with legendary songwriter Alejandro Escovedo, once heralded in the pages of Acoustic Guitar magazine as the quote crown prince of the Austin Texas scene. Escovedo has lived a musical life that cannot be easily categorized, not one to be constrained by genre or motivated entirely by commercial success. Be constrained by genre or motivated entirely by commercial success. Escovedo writes songs informed by his personal experiences of pain, longing, sickness, recovery and loss. Throughout his long and winding career, he's been a punk, a pioneer of alt-country and a member of the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame, and has played along musicians like John Prine, john Cale and Bruce Springsteen. Our conversation starts at the beginning. What made Alejandro Escovedo first pick up the guitar?
Alejandro Escovedo:Well, like everybody, I think you know Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley and the way that the girls were screaming for him, and you know the Beatles, of course, really kind of nailed it. You know, and there was always this great photo in a record called High Tides, green Grass by the Rolling Stones that had Keith Richards sitting on a stool in the studio playing a hummingbird, a Gibson hummingbird, and he's wearing these round blue sunglasses and I just thought it was the greatest image and I thought that guitar was the most beautiful guitar. So I always wanted a Hummingbird. Eventually I got a 69 Hummingbird here in Austin. So I didn't really know anyone in my family. I come from a family of drummers right, they're all percussionists and stuff. My dad played a little guitar, but very minimally, so the guitar came from rock and roll, you know.
Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers:How were you able to first get one in your hands and get started?
Alejandro Escovedo:Well, it's funny because, you know, I did hang out with musicians, but I was not one myself. So I was always around records and music and clubs and going to see bands. So a lot of my friends were in bands so you know, they would like let me show me a chord or two. And I hung with those three chords throughout my life, the you know E-D-A kind of you know thing. So that was always my favorite. But yeah, you know, once I got a guitar, just I kind of messed around with it but I didn't actually really devote myself to the guitar until much later I was in a band called the Nuns, right, we were out of San Francisco, this is like punk rock, this is like 1975, right. And so, uh, we didn't know how to play, but because we were making a movie about the worst band in the world, we thought we would be the musicians in the movie, you know, because we thought we looked really cool, right. So we became, we became, we started to make this movie about the worst band in the world and immediately abandoned the movie and became a band and luckily punk rock was happening and punk rock kind of embraced us, you know. So that was when I finally got in a band. We played real gigs and, you know, struggled and blah, blah, blah, and then from the nuns I moved to New York City and played with Judy Nylon there and then I played with Rank and File there and then we came back to Austin, austin, texas in 1980.
Alejandro Escovedo:And it was there that I then that I really started to kind of get a lot more serious about songwriting and guitars. You know, playing guitars it was one of you know I never really thought of myself as a guitar player because I started so late that I use the guitar more just as a tool for writing songs. You know, over the years, I mean, the guitar has meant so much to me. I've written all my songs on guitar. So they always say that guitars sound great when they have a lot of songs in them. I have this 56 J45 that I've written the majority of my songs on and that guitar is probably one of the greatest guitars ever built. 56 J45 that I've written the majority of my songs on, you know, and that guitar is probably one of the greatest guitars ever built. In my opinion, everyone that plays it loves it, you know.
Nick Grizzle:Even the ones that are recorded with electric. You write on the acoustic.
Alejandro Escovedo:Yeah, exactly yeah, I write pretty much everything on acoustic guitar. You know, when I'm at home that's what I'm playing most of the time. Lately I finally set up my stuff so that I have an amp rig set up at all times. You know to play, but it's always acoustic guitar. You know, I love the sound of it and it allows me a lot of freedom. This is actually a 51 J45 body. You can't really see inside here, but it's all burnt up and very dark in there. Old wood. My friend, tony Nobles, who builds my guitar, but he had this body and then he found a 51 neck and put it back together again and so this is the one I take on the road all the time.
Nick Grizzle:So it's a little bit of a Frankenstein thing going on there.
Alejandro Escovedo:It is a bit of Frankenstein, but you know it just really sounds great. And when I play acoustically, what we've been doing lately is that we'll have a set, an electric set, right and then in the middle of it we'll walk out into the audience unplugged and just play a few songs out there for people and they seem to really like it. So and I you know it's funny because with the acoustic guitar it allows me to get closer to the audience, which I really enjoy. I like being in the midst of them. You know I don't like the separation that much. So this, when I do play acoustic, that's what I like the most about it. You know, it allows me to just get closer to the people. They really have to listen too at that point, which is awesome. So I have to say that this is one of my faves.
Alejandro Escovedo:I also have a really nice Collings guitar that I got when I made this record called the Boxing Mirror. It was around 2005,. I think I got it and John Cale was producing that record and when I took it out of the box for the first time I wanted him to be the first one to play that guitar. So he played it, so he's the first one to have played that guitar. But that guitar is amazing because it's the Collings, that's based kind of on a Gibson design as opposed to the Martin designs that they usually use. So that guitar really sounded like a piano almost. It was really loud and just beautiful resonance that it had. It's a much louder guitar. It was really loud and just beautiful resonance that it had. It's a much louder guitar but also a little more difficult to play than this one. You have to really be committed to that one. This one I can kind of, you know, get a little. I'm not, I get a little sloppy sometimes, so but yeah, so acoustic guitars have always been part of the same.
Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers:Do you find that you're, the way that you play is completely different than on an electric guitar versus an acoustic guitar, or do you just kind of translate a lot of the same sort of riffs and things that you do on both? I?
Alejandro Escovedo:think that that they're completely different. I mean, I can get the same effect with an acoustic guitar that I could on electric guitar, like when we toured acoustically. At first we had two acoustic guitars David Polkingham At first it was Joe Eddie Hines, this great acoustic guitar player. He was more like a Keith Richards, you know, kind of stonesy sounding Ronnie Wood style acoustic guitar player, but it was really. It fit perfectly. And then we had cello and violin, you know.
Alejandro Escovedo:But we were doing a lot of the same songs that we were doing in the electric set at that time. So you know they were played aggressively. You know it wasn't trying aggressively. You know it wasn't trying. You know it wasn't cat stevens like, it was really kind of more aggressive. You know, maybe in the way that john fahey played, you know, like kind of more, it just had a little more bite to it, you know. And we did all the same songs. I mean we used to do this great version of I want to be your dog by the stooges with acoustic guitars and strings, but it was just as wild as any electric version it doesn't sound like your songs have to be.
Nick Grizzle:I wrote this on acoustic. It always has to be played on acoustic. I wrote this on electric, or I normally play it on electric. It always has to be on electric. You like to change it up? You change up the arrangements fairly often.
Alejandro Escovedo:Yeah, as much as possible. I mean, I think that's. You know my new record is a great example of totally tossing everything that we recorded in the first place out the window and trying to find new ways to express older songs. You know, because the new record is it's a record called echo dancing and it's a it's pretty much a retrospective of songs I've written in the past. You know there's 14 songs, but they they kind of. You know there's a true believer song, there's a buick m McCain song. I even recorded a Nuns song that'll be on a Covers record that we're doing later. So you know I went through the years and picked out songs and totally redid Now that record. This record is not as guitar heavy as my other records have been. It's a different type of record.
Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers:Curious about, in revisiting those songs, whether obviously you've really remade the arrangements of them, the instrumentation and all that thing, the feel of them. But did you find that you relate to the songs in a different way now than maybe you did when you wrote them, or that they mean something different to you now?
Alejandro Escovedo:you know it works both ways. It kind of sends you back to that place you were when you wrote the song, but from a completely different perspective in that, you know, I'm 73 years old. You know I may have been 20 something years younger than that when I wrote the tune or whatever you know. So in some cases even old, you know many more years. So, yeah, it's a completely different experience. I feel like from this perspective, where I'm at now, at this point, I can sing the songs better than I did when I first wrote them, because I feel like now I've watched them kind of grow, evolve, I've watched them get put on the shelf and dusted off and brought back out again. So I have a different relationship with the songs than I did when I first wrote them.
Alejandro Escovedo:You know, because a lot of times you write songs as a result, as a reaction to something. You know Some sort of tragic event, significant event that's happened in your life sparks a song. Right, you know, let's say something as simple as a breakup. You know you break up with someone and you know the tendency is to go write this song. You know, maybe a mean song, maybe a pissed off song, a hurt song, whatever you know, but I have always found that you know they don't mean the same thing.
Alejandro Escovedo:It's like songs sometimes come to me and they're almost prophetic in a way. They'll be about something I've been thinking about a lot and I'll write this song and I don't really understand it, but it feels good and it reads. But it feels good and it reads well and it sings well and it plays well, and then something might happen within a year or two later, whatever that suddenly brings that song into complete focus. That has happened to me and that's very interesting to me, that somehow I think we find ourselves in the right place at the right time, with enough openness and vulnerability to kind of uh, uh, consume this feeling, this, this expression, with words and emotion. You know that becomes a song. It's, it's a fascinating mystery to me. I don't know how it happens or why it happens, but I I feel so fortunate that it did happen to me. It's helped me through a lot, in other words, Do you write?
Alejandro Escovedo:you know, in those moments you write pieces of songs no-transcript from going back to the most primitive, stupid, silly song I've ever written, you know, and maybe I just learned not to go there anymore, whatever that may be. But, um, you know, there's always stuff to be learned from the songs, in my opinion. I know, for me. I go back to some of these songs that I wrote through some very, very difficult times and they're hard to sing in public, but I feel like they're necessary to sing because they do connect with people and it's good for me from time to time to do it too.
Alejandro Escovedo:I don't know you know it's like Townes Van Zandt used to say that he was just kind of the vessel for the blues. You know that the blues would flow through him and you know you've heard Leonard Cohen say songwriting is a blessing and a curse. You know that the blues would flow through him and, uh, you know you've heard leonard cohen say songwriting is a blessing and a curse. You know um it. It has been an incredible asset and and friend at times and it's also been one of my darkest kind of rooms to venture into is the writing is kind of rooms to venture into is the writing. Not to get too heavy on this stuff, but it's just songwriting, they're just songs.
Alejandro Escovedo:Yeah, you know you have to learn to kind of become comfortable with expressing those kind of things too, because you know it's a very self-conscious kind of thing to be out there naked, basically singing about the things that have hurt you the most or, you know, have been revelations for you or joyous times or whatever, but you're sharing them with. Uh, you have to remember, like at first when I was singing these songs about, like my album gravity was all about the suicide of my wife and I went out to promote this record in bars and venues where people probably some of them at the time they weren't there to hear me necessarily or listen to me At my woes. They were there to party and get laid or whatever. And so here's this guy in the corner singing these sad old man songs all the time. It was kind of hard sometimes to get through that and sometimes even as a songwriter I felt like I was maybe violating some sort of precious code in singing those songs to people who were different.
Nick Grizzle:Yeah, that's interesting. How did that feel like, uh, you're violating that code maybe that experience wasn't for me to share with everybody you know, and maybe I was being disrespectful to the memory of that person, maybe.
Alejandro Escovedo:But I didn't do it with those intentions. You know, I never did. I never wrote those songs for commercial success. You don't write those songs for commercial success. I wrote them because I kind of had to right, you know, there was no other way out. So that's why I wrote them, you know, and that's why I stand behind them. Still, they were necessary do you?
Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers:Do you ever write songs that then you feel like, nah, I'm keeping this, this is for me, I'm keeping this for myself and not one that I'm gonna put out into the world. Or do you feel like whatever you write is part of what you're gonna share with people?
Alejandro Escovedo:you know there's a lot that I write that I do keep to myself, just because at this point I think it's better for my health, my mental health too. Uh, you know, the fact that I've written it down and I can go back and read it and uh, is important enough for me. You know, it doesn't have to be for everyone, but it does give me some satisfaction.
Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers:Well, there's therapeutic value in just getting it outside of yourself, right?
Alejandro Escovedo:Completely yeah. Just writing it down on paper and seeing it there is good enough sometimes.
Nick Grizzle:I read that you really didn't start writing songs until you got got to austin. Is that, is that accurate? Is that true?
Alejandro Escovedo:yeah, I was in bands but I never really wrote a song.
Nick Grizzle:Yeah what was it? What was it that sparked, uh, the songwriting for you? Was it being in the new area, or with just the time in your life, or a combination of things.
Alejandro Escovedo:Talents van zandt was here, joe Ely was here, butch Hancock was here, jimmy Dale Gilmore was here, rich Minus was here, blaze Foley was here, lucinda was here, pat Mears was here, angela Strait I mean, it was just full of songwriters. Everywhere you walked you'd run into a songwriter, you know, and so songs became the thing In rock and roll. It was kind of this more visceral kind of just the explosion of sound and light and the communal thing about being at a rock concert, and the words meant a lot to us in the 60s, no doubt. But suddenly I was really in this kind of microcosm of songwriters, you know, and so that, along with the fact that I had left rank and file where the brothers Kinman were the songwriters, I now had to start writing songs if I was going to be in this next band, the True Believers, with my brother Javier, and my brother brought a lot of songs, he was a songwriter. So I had to really kind of just jump on the horse, you know. And once I started writing, though, they came in a wave, like a tidal wave.
Alejandro Escovedo:I just had all these songs, and I was really like it was this wonderful time where I played at the Alamo Hotel, which was a listening club here in Austin in the early days. Emma Jo's was another one where you go see all these great songwriters. The Cactus Cafe and the outhouse was another one where you go see all these great songwriters. The Cactus Cafe and the Outhouse was another one. But anyway, there were all these great places that I could go watch and be a student to guys like Townes and Joe Ely. You know who I really took to, and so that's what I was. I was a student, merely a student, and I followed those guys around town.
Alejandro Escovedo:I was a stalker of sorts, you know, joe, when I left the Believers and went on a solo run, a solo career, joe took me on a tour of Texas where we just played around Texas, like all these clubs all over Texas, and I got to sit first and watch him perform solo and that had a dynamic influence on me. You know, just watching those guys and listening to them, talking to them, and you know the other great part of it was that they were very approachable. So you know, the other great part of it was that they were very approachable so you could sit in a guitar circle with those guys and they were just always very encouraging. So when I left Rank and File, honestly nobody had really expected anything of me.
Alejandro Escovedo:I was just a rhythm guitar player in a band, and then, when that band broke up, I had to write songs. But once I started writing songs, it's obvious that that's kind of what I was meant to be, anyway, you know, because then the songs just started pouring out and the albums started pouring out. I don't know how many albums I have now, but quite a few albums.
Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers:Do you feel like the musical direction of your writing was then also influenced a lot by all these people you're talking about? I mean, there is a kind of a you know some sort of style about you know many of the Texas songwriters. I mean people almost think of it Texas songwriters as being like a genre unto itself, sort of like a country and folk and the storytelling, and so did all of that influence you a lot in terms of what you wind up writing yourself you know it.
Alejandro Escovedo:What it really did was, first of all, coming back to texas was a big deal for me, you know. We left texas, my family 57, and moved to orange county, california, you know. So that was a culture shock, right. So then, coming back, having traveled from la hollywood to san francisco, to new york city and then back to austin, was a big deal. So when I I got here, I must admit that, uh, there was a sense of pride suddenly starting to build within me about tex, texas, and where I was from and what this land was like and the history of this land and the great artists that had been born of this land. Right, and so being around those type of songwriters enabled me to see a kind of independence that was even stronger than like what punk rock was supposed to be.
Alejandro Escovedo:You know, do you know what I'm saying?
Alejandro Escovedo:It's like, you know, it's what the clash saw in joe ely.
Alejandro Escovedo:You know that these people who had not only written these amazing songs but had lived these incredible lives, you know, out in ranches, out in west texas or east texas, the panhandle, south texas, you know, and all this music that came from this big, big state was incredible, whether it was the blues from east texas or the conjunto ranchero music from South Texas, san Antonio, where I was born, you know Doug Song and Rocky Erickson, the big boys and all these great bands that were here at the time.
Alejandro Escovedo:I suddenly started to see that there was a real independence in Texas that I didn't see in other places and kind of allowed these guys to be even more eccentric than I think that a lot of people were in other places, and so through that it gave me a lot of confidence, and the community here in Austin also was very supportive, and so you had these cool little places to play. Nobody really wanted to leave town because the beer was cheap, mexican food was good, barton Springs was here, the girls were pretty and there were places to play, you know. So there was always backyard parties and stuff like that.
Nick Grizzle:Man, you make me want to get a time machine.
Alejandro Escovedo:Yeah exactly, and so it was that kind of place, and it had a tremendous influence on me, more so than any of the places prior that I had lived, and I'd been to a lot of places prior to that.
Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers:So you kept using the word independence about artists. So do you mean in terms of just following their own style, not trying to fit into any particular category or chase, a particular kind of career or marketplace? Is that kind of what you mean?
Alejandro Escovedo:Well, austin was not ambition-fueled. You know you had LA, you had Nashville, you had New York. Those were all industry strongholds, right, but Austin didn't really care. You know. You know Townes could be, you know, sometimes not able to play his guitar and you know Blaze was really a mercurial kind of character. All those guys guitar and you know Blaze was really mercurial kind of character. All those guys were just, you know, and then like even guys like Mickey Newberry, let's say, you know, who had big hits and stuff but went to Nashville to promote Texas songwriters, you know, because they were different, you know, guy Clark and all those guys, talents especially too.
Alejandro Escovedo:Um, the independence was something that was just kind of bred into the blood of of these people here and I loved it. You know it was just a great place to be because punk rock here was very different than any other city in america. You know it was very different, very different in Texas than it was in other places and there were some great punk rock bands here. The Dicks and the Big Boys were as good as anybody. So it was a great place and I still love it. Austin is not the same. I said that in a song. Austin's changed, but show me what has it. But it's still at the core, that place that I remember.
Nick Grizzle:That's the end of part one. Tune into part two to learn about the guitars and gear. Alejandro tours with his memories of touring with John Prine and how music can get us through hard times. The Acoustic Guitar Podcast is brought to you by the team at Acoustic Guitar Magazine. I'm your host, nick Grizzle, joined for this episode by co-host Jeffrey Pepper Rogers. The Acoustic Guitar Podcast is directed and edited by Joey Lusterman. Tanya Gonzalez is our producer. Executive producers are Lyzy Lusterman and Stephanie Campos Dal Broi. Our theme song was composed by Adam Perlmutter and performed for this episode by Jeffrey Pepper Rogers. If you enjoy this podcast and want to support us, visit our Patreon page at patreoncom slash acoustic guitar plus or find the link in the show notes for this episode. As a supporter, you'll have access to exclusive bonus episodes, along with other special perks and if you're already a patron, as always, we thank you so much for your support.