#Alejandro Escovedo

[bandcampsnoop]

10/7/24.

This is the Munster Records version of this release which contains 4 extra tracks. Unfortunately, these are only one minute long clips, but thanks to the rule of punk, that's more than enough to get a taste of these songs. If you want the songs in their entirety, here you go.

The Zeros were originally from Chula Vista, California and were part of the punk explosion in the U.S. They have a clear Clash/Ramones sound. Their first show was organized by Peter Case (The Nerves) and they shared the bill with The Germs and The Weirdos.

Better yet, one of the founders is Javier Escovedo whose brother Alejandro Escovedo is a legend - so is his niece, Sheila E.

The Zeros reformed a couple of times and Javier has a couple of solo records, but this early stuff is amazing. October is Hispanic Heritage Month, so let's listen to and celebrate some great punk from the Latin community in California.

Just listen to "Don't Push Me Around" - think of The Clean or The Replacements playing it.

[dinosaursr66]

The Kinman brothers and the great Alejandro Escovado formed cowpunk band Rank and File. Loved their sound

SONG OF THE DAY - Thursday, April 4, 2024

[bostonfly]

Listen/purchase: Street Songs Of Love by Alejandro Escovedo

[manitat]

Alejandro Escovedo - From Death To Texas

[sinceileftyoublog]

Chuck Prophet Interview: Get Hot

Chuck Prophet & ¿Qiensave?

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Can music heal? It's something even I, a born skeptic, found myself thinking about the first time I read the backstory of Wake the Dead (Yep Roc), the collaborative album between Americana singer-songwriter Chuck Prophet and Salinas, California-based cumbia group ¿Qiensave? The prolific Prophet had been a fan of cumbia music for a few years, first encountering it via cumbia nights that would sometimes follow his sets at the Make-Out Room in San Francisco. Gleefully watching the dancers at the club led to collecting vinyl from Latin America. Prophet had a new obsession.

In 2022, doctors found a mass in Prophet's intestine, and he was diagnosed with stage four lymphoma. He underwent an operation so they could determine how far along the disease had progressed and how severe it was. He waited almost two weeks for the results, which thankfully revealed the disease was treatable with immunotherapy and chemotherapy. But just like during the initial stages of pandemic lockdown, Prophet had time to sit, think, and listen. Instead of wallowing in despair--even during that waiting period where he didn't know whether he'd make it out alive, let alone ever play music again--he turned to cumbia music to raise his spirits and keep active his brain and heart while other parts of his body needed to rest.

As he recovered, along with getting back into his favorite activities like surfing, Prophet started jamming with ¿Qiensave? What was at first perhaps a mere celebration of the fact that Prophet felt more like himself again, turned into ¿Qiensave? backing Prophet at live shows. At that point, Prophet wanted to test out some of the cumbia-inspired songs he had been writing with longtime writing partner Kurt Lipschutz (aka klipschutz). To see whether his and ¿Qiensave?'s live chemistry could further mesh with his backing band, The Mission Express, Prophet invited them all to cram in the studio and record. With almost double-digit numbers of people in one room, the group had no choice but to record live.

The result, of course, is Wake the Dead, a record that incredibly still sounds arranged for maximum dynamic energy. The opening and title track is an exercise in contrast: between crooning and deadpanned vocals from Prophet, between tangible elements like wiry guitars and accordion, and distortion. The acoustic breeze of "First Came the Thunder" is eventually subsumed by a more abstract, shimmery palate. "Same Old Crime" alternates between cumbia-reggae and soft folk in the chorus and verses. And "Sally Was a Cop", which Prophet co-wrote with Alejandro Escovedo and appeared on Escovedo's Big Station in 2012, gets a groovier, more celebratory sounding version here, despite carrying the same themes of drug cartel violence.

In fact, a difference in tone between the themes and instrumentation is a feature, not a bug of Wake the Dead. Escovedo's song is, of course, evergreen, but some of Prophet's tunes are prescient. The titular character of "Betty's Song" is a working-class child of immigrants who wants to study art but "watched her family ripped in half." Eventually, the narrator of the song declares their solidarity with Betty: "Where you're in trouble, honey, I'm in trouble, too." "In the Shadows (for Elon)" may hit too close to home today but nonetheless finds solace in the world regular folks occupy after the rich and powerful have left our dying planet for a more hospitable one. That is, if there are musicians around, there will still be music, like the thrilling interplay between Matt Winegar's farfisa and ¿Qiensave?'s clacking percussion. I can't help but think, too, that the title track's declarations of waking the dead to dance, and Prophet's considerations that, "We might end up on the moon / They might even name a planet after me," is a subtle suggestion that our boogieing take place on the dreams and graves of the oligarchs themselves, should they be defeated.

Days after Wake the Dead was released, I spoke with Prophet over the phone about the album. ("It seems to be connecting with people," he said at the time. "That's a good feeling.") On Friday, Prophet will play FitzGerald's with His Cumbia Shoes, a backing band featuring two members of ¿Qiensave? (keyboardist, güira player, vocalist Mario Cortez, guitarist and vocalist Alejandro Gomez), two members of The Mission Express (guitarist James DePrato, drummer Vicente Rodriguez), and Mexico City bassist Joaquin Zamudio Garcia, all of whom played on the album. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Wake the Dead album art

Since I Left You: Wake the Dead was born out of difficult circumstances for you. Are people generally aware of what you went through?

Chuck Prophet: It's become a big part of my story. It probably would have taken more effort to keep it under wraps. Once I was diagnosed, I had to start cancelling some shows. Initially, we called it a family crisis, and then, eventually, it was easier to let it all hang out.

SILY: This album, in a way, is the ultimate culmination of that upfront communication with the music listening public. The very title, and title track, sees you starting mortality in the face and dancing anyway.

CP: I suppose, yeah.

SILY: So you came across ¿Qiensave? and decided to follow them and eventually played with them. After how long did you decide to record with them?

CP: I don't decide to record, period, unless there's something I'm excited about. None of my records have been any different in that respect. I'm not really a big home recording person. I don't have a studio. This record isn't a lot different from my other records in that somewhere along the line, I had two or three songs I felt were taking me somewhere I hadn't been before. That has a lot to do with ¿Qiensave? That's when I started getting excited about it. I wrote most of these songs with Kurt Lipschutz, who I have written so many songs with over the years. I was following ¿Qiensave? around because I was such a fan, and I also went out to Modesto and saw a band called Valley Wolf. This is sort of an extension of how I was afforded time to listen during both the lockdown and my treatment. It had been a long time since I had been able to listen to records, and it was cumbia music that I kept returning to. It lifted my spirits.

SILY: There are songs on here that are certainly dark on paper, but the instrumentation and lyrics tell a deeper story. "Betty's Song" has lines that paint a brutal picture, but there's so much drama in the instrumentation to give it an eventually uplifting arc. Was that arc something you and the band conjured spontaneously?

CP: I guess it was really the song that wanted that, somehow. Every song has its needs. Kurt and I were writing a lot of these characters. I don't know what you would call Betty. She's maybe from a working class background, trying to transcend where she comes from. We imagined her heading towards an MFA in Fine Art. [laughs] Even the name Betty is kind of an old-fashioned, working class name.

SILY: Do you think this album captures the looseness you and the band had even in the initial sessions?

CP: By all means. In terms of the process and how this record was made, we were tracking as many as 8 people on the floor at the same time. You can't really give the attention to detail you would if you were overdubbing instruments one at a time. People were just playing. That suited it well, because in terms of records, I'm at a place in my life where the type of music I'm really hungry for is often live, and [the musicians' characters are] full of personality. In this post-Pro Tools era...there are a lot of really layered records like [those by] The War on Drugs, who I respect, but I'm not really hungry for that right now.

SILY: Even a band like that, though, when you see them live, you see their chops. Some of my favorite records of theirs are their live records.

CP: Sure. Yeah, I've seen them live. They're great.

SILY: You initially co-wrote "Sally Was A Cop" with Alejandro Escovedo for release on his Big Station record. Was including a different version on Wake the Dead your opportunity to put your own spin on it?

CP: Yeah. Alejandro and I had written an album called Real Animal, and that was really an explosive year for us. We wrote so many songs and spent a lot of time together in San Francisco and Austin writing. I don't recall when "Sally Was A Cop" was written, but it did come out on his Big Station record.

[My version] just asserted itself. I like the content of it, and if I was to be totally honest, it gave me an opportunity to stretch out on guitar a little bit.

SILY: When Alejandro plays the song live, it's much more deliberate, and there's a lot of echo on his vocals. It's almost mournful sounding. The version on this record is groovy and blistering and dynamic.

CP: I'm looking forward to playing it live.

SILY: What goes into adapting these songs to the live stage? Is it pretty natural, or do you have to spend a lot of time picking certain elements to carry over?

CP: Some of the parts and figures you can't imagine the song without, end up asserting themselves. From there, we learn the song the way it was recorded, and from there, we might unlearn it a little bit on the bandstand night after night.

SILY: Is the unlearning key to the process of keeping a loose feeling to the performance?

CP: Well, yeah, it's not a recital! We're playing and listening to each other musically. Hopefully it's a little bit conversational. I saw ELO play recently, and I don't think that was the approach they had. It was more of a recital, almost a symphony. I enjoyed it immensely, but [that's not us.] We have a lot of improvisation.

SILY: Both the pandemic and your recovery forced you to lay low but provided you the opportunity to take in records. Obviously, you fell in love with cumbia. Is setting aside time to listen to music something you've found yourself doing more since then?

CP: Absolutely. That's how I'm able to marinade so much of this music. I haven't really been afforded that time. I feel like I've just been on the treadmill, writing songs for a record or trying to wrestle a record to the ground, trying to get the songs to behave. Then, it's a matter of going on tour, or recovering from being on tour, which is often the case. In some ways, the lockdown and everything was kind of a strange blessing. I don't know what would have come along.

SILY: Are you still diving deep into cumbia?

CP: Yeah, I was just at the Discodelic on 24th street a few days ago and bought a stack of records.

SILY: Are there any other genres or worlds of music with which you were previously less familiar that you're also diving into?

CP: During the pandemic, I had a radio show called Trip in the Country. I had a show every week. Not only did I do a lot listening, thinking, and playing guitar, but I also did a lot of watching, because there are some phenomenal things you can find on YouTube. You can see a group of musicians in 1972 in Peru playing electric guitar, scraping a bucket, playing in the dirt, and running an extension chord to their patio. KEXP in Seattle has done some remote sessions where they went down to Mexico City and recorded some friends of mine, Sonido Gallo Negro as well as the Mexican Institute of Sound. There's a lot of inspiration out there all over the place.

SILY: As much as some people talk about the negative economic aspects of music being predominantly online, there is now virtual crate-digging, going down a wormhole of something you're interested in.

CP: That's a little bit of what attracts us to music. There's a curiousness when we're tapping into something. That's what it means to be a music fan.

SILY: Are you continuously writing?

CP: Not really. There are times when I might pick up a guitar and follow my fingers somewhere and maybe fall into something, and I'll make a note of it on my phone or the cassette player. Most times I don't.

SILY: Do you foresee recording more music with ¿Qiensave?

CP: Sure! There's a certain momentum you get when you play some gigs together and get hot. When you get hot, things just start happening. That can happen in the studio, too. [You can] have a few days where you're doing a lot of problem solving and whatever it takes, kicking the can down the road, but you can get hot where you have a few days where things are explosive.

SILY: Do you feel like when things are hot, it feels like the songs are their own living, breathing, entities?

CP: I know they are living, breathing entities because when you play them live, they evolve. Maybe there's another version you play on stage at FitzGerald's a year later that's different than the one in the studio. It's hard to call anything definitive, unless you're The Beatles. I don't think "Taxman" can be improved. But with Bob Dylan, and a lot of the music I like, there's always [another] version out there. He's always reinventing what he does. I don't think anybody said he's the greatest singer or guitar player--I happen to think he is--but he's the most bootlegged artist in the history of recorded music [for a reason].

[dangerkeith3000x]

I love this song by our native son, Alejandro Escovedo. Since the very first time I heard it months ago, I still love it. Even during the period of time my local public radio station would play the song both on my way to work and on my way home about half the time.

[americanahighways]

Show Review: Jason Isbell w/ Alejandro Escovedo at Wolf Trap

Show Review: Jason Isbell w/ Alejandro Escovedo at Wolf Trap @jasonisbell @americanahighways @melissalclarke @alejandro_escovedo @wolf_trap #livemusicphotography #concertphotography @tinpony @sadlervaden #writtenbyahuman #photographedbyahuman #concertreviews #americanahighways #americanamusic

[krispyweiss]

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit with Alejandro Escovedo at Rose Music Center at the Heights, Huber Heights, Ohio, Sept. 7, 2024

Jason Isbell cleans up the sound of his formative experience with Drive-By Truckers, adds elements of Neil Young and Crazy Horse and the Allman Brothers Band and - with key support from “my rock ‘n’ roll band, the 400 Unit” - creates something smooth and contemporary.

While the latter adjective marks Isbell as his own musician, the former means he plays - as he did before a near-sell-out crowd during his Sept. 7 gig at Huber Heights, Ohio’s, Rose Music Center - with a net. JI400U’s performance was therefore akin to NYCH minus the ragged glory (“Miles”) and/or ABB without the mountain of jams as on “This Ain’t It.” And Isbell’s decision to open his three-song encore with the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” was incongruity in the extreme.

So when guitarist Sadler Vaden temporarily took control of the Unit for a gnarled rendition of Drivin N Cryin’s “Honeysuckle Blue” and unveiled the sextet’s potential for exhilarating, borderline-reckless presentations, the Eagles-like precision of such numbers of “Death Wish” and “Cast Iron Skillet” were that much more underwhelming despite confirming the impeccable musicianship of Isbell and Vaden, who played slide, electric and acoustic guitars; drummer/guitarist Will Johnson; drummer Chad Gamble; keyboardist Derry deBorja; and Anna Butterss on electric and double bass.

This left the balladic, introspective presentations of such compositions as “Elephant” and “If We Were Vampires” - both about the inevitability of death - to affirm Isbell as an aural 21st-century poet laureate.

For 110 minutes, Isbell and the 400 Unit delivered impactful stories with strong vocal performances wrapped inside solid compositions. That Sound Bites nevertheless experienced them as peaks and valleys; moments of intense focus and idle listening to what was coming from the speakers says something about the need for a certain amount of looseness - playing without a net, like a Wallenda - in the live setting. That was the missing element.

Opener Alejandro Escovedo had it in droves. And the guitarist, his drummer and keyboardist delivered a raw, 45-minute opening set that found the veteran musician “nearing the end of this road” after 50 years of touring.

He alternated between two mics - one for his natural voice (“San Antonio Rain”) another with a loudspeaker effect (“Everybody Loves Me”) - as his band ground out grimy, deep-pocketed grooves sprinkled with synthy dust and bass pedals.

And when Escovedo turned windmill after windmill on his Gibson Les Paul guitar at the end of the show-stopping “Castenets,” the end didn’t seem that close at all.

Grade card: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit with Alejandro Escovedo at Rose Music Center - 9/7/24 - B-

9/8/24

[moochilatv]

Trapper Schoepp presents: Meet Me at the End of the World

It's a classic rock song with a beautiful action behind it

This upbeat indie rocker was written by NYC musician Jesse Malin and Mexican-American songwriter Alejandro Escovedo.

Jesse is a mentor of Alejandro and recently had a spinal stroke. This song is a benefit for him. Alejandro is touring across USA and raising funds for his recovery.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Trapper Schoepp (@trapperschoepp)

Find more about the tour here: https://www.trapperschoepp.com/tour

[albumswhatilistenedto]

[musicmags]

[sinceileftyoublog]

Alejandro Escovedo's Songs, Living and Breathing

From left to right: Mark Henne, Alejandro Escovedo, James Mastro, Scott Danbom

BY JORDAN MAINZER

He's a true master of reinvention. Don't get me wrong: It's the same Alejandro Escovedo. But he's continuing to find out that there are many right ways to tell his stories, especially when it comes to their musical accompaniment. Escovedo hasn't released a new album of original material since 2018's The Crossing, and that's okay. In 2021, he shared a Spanish-language version of the aforementioned album, La Cruzada, an act whose sociopolitical ramifications speak for themselves, in an era of increasing anti-immigration rhetoric and xenophobia that the very album explores. And earlier this year, inspired by his forebears, Escovedo decided to revisit all eras of his discography.

Including tunes from pre-solo career bands Buick MacKane and The True Believers, Echo Dancing (Yep Roc) is 14 re-recordings of older songs. When Escovedo boarded a plane to Italy to record with Don Antonio (with whom he recorded The Crossing) and Nicola Peruch, he thought he was going to improvise a new record from his lyrical and melodic sketches. Upon hearing other bands' interpretations of his songs--namely Calexico's version of "Wave", originally from 2001's A Man Under the Influence--Escovedo thought, "I, too, can do that." The man who sings on Echo Dancing is, yes, older and wiser, having seen friends and family members come and go, continuing to find truth in stories both personal and fictional. But instead of focusing on his own voice, Escovedo obscures himself behind clouds of haze, electronic effects, sparse drum machines, and distorted guitars, the pain in his voice all the more affecting due to how isolated it sounds. On "Thought I'd Let You Know", a clattering song originally from 2016's Burn Something Beautiful, Escovedo stretches the running time a full three minutes, as if to give himself even more time to reflect alongside buzzing stabs of noise. He repeats, "We're not alone / We are all alone," the effective musings of someone struggling to make sense of the world around them.

At the same time, if songs with more traditional instrumentation sound futuristic on their Echo Dancing version, Escovedo pulls familiar sounds out of those that might have sounded dystopian in the past. The Crossing's "MC Overload", for instance, trades the original's chugging, metallic instrumentation and vocoders for bluesy picking, Gianni Perinelli's soprano saxophone, and Escovedo's deadpan baritone. And Antonio adds gospel-inflected organ to "Swallows of San Juan" and "Last to Know", which somehow sounds at home next to drum machines and dulled bass drums.

Escovedo's gear

When I saw that Escovedo was touring Echo Dancing, I thought, "Which versions of these songs would he play live?" Would we get the new version of "John Conquest" with syncopated synthesizers, or the Buick Mackane punk burner (technically and hilariously titled "John Conquest You've Got Enough Dandruff on Your Collar to Bread a Veal Cutlet")? Would he play fan favorite "Castanets", a self-described Mott the Hoople-style rock and roll song, or "Casta​ñ​uelas", the slow, drippy, half-Spanish language dub version with slightly different lyrics? According to his show last Thursday at FitzGerald's, the answer was, "Sometimes, both, other times, something in between the two, and occasionally, neither." During "Sacramento & Polk", Escovedo's venerable backing band--guitarist James Mastro, keyboardist Scott Danbom, drummer Mark Henne--adopted the upbeat punk drive of the original version from 2006's The Boxing Mirror, behind Escovedo's obscured vocals, which were inspired by Echo Dancing's version. On "Bury Me", a prescient tune when it appeared on Escovedo's 1992 debut Gravity, Mastro played the original's twangy slide guitar, while Danbom extracted the pure funk from the new version. Their performance of "Too Many Tears" combined the built-up dirge of Big Station's original with Escovedo's miles-away delivery of Echo Dancing's. And "Everybody Loves Me" retreated to a soulful, back-to-basics ethos, its blues-funk towering above the original's CCR-indebted strut and new version's wonderfully puzzling industrial country.

If the true testament to a song's lasting impact is how it can emotionally resonate over time, ballad "Sensitive Boys" was the highlight of the set. Introducing it, Escovedo paid tribute to his brother Manuel, who passed away weeks ago at 94 years old. Hearing Escovedo repeat, "The world needs you now," despite what we all knew to be true was heartbreaking, yes, but the band filled the room with an undeniable warmth, from Escovedo's deep belting to Mastro's plucky guitars and Danbom's keyboards, out of which he concocted a whole orchestra worth of sounds. It's sometimes hard to remember just how long Escovedo's been around when I think to myself that he hasn't put out anything "original" in a while. Hearing Echo Dancing and seeing him live reminds me that the sort of newness I look out for, even crave, is still limited by the construct of time. With the right shift in perspective and a couple tweaks, a song can be just as living and breathing as I am.

[imthepaterfamilias]

I Was Drunk - Alejandro Escovedo

[oldpunksgoodstyle]

Holy shit what a lineup!