Latest / Troubled Men Podcast / Feral Zone 25 ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO: MYTH AND MEMORY

Transcript

Feral Zone 25 ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO: MYTH AND MEMORY · Troubled Men Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker A: Inside the Feral Zone.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: Greetings, feral listeners. Welcome back. Inside the Feral Zone of the Troubled Men Podcast. I am Renee Komen, coming to you from a notorious location in downtown New Orleans. Now, many of you know the Feral Zone is the sister podcast of the Troubled Men podcast. It appears in this space from time to time as circumstances call for. Today we have a very special guest, an old pal we've known for many years, Prince among men. Punk rock royalty. Rock and roll royalty. He's a terrific award winning musician, songwriter, singer, guitar player, producer. His career goes back to the mid-1970s with the nuns at the beginning of the San Francisco punk rock scene. Later forming Rank and File with Chip and Tony Kinman and then the True Believers before starting a solo career in the early 90s. It's yielded over 20 albums the last 30 years. We're going to get into all that and much more. But without further ado, the great Mr. Alejandro Escovedo.
• 1:18
  Speaker C: Hey, welcome.
• 1:19
  Speaker B: Welcome, Alejandro.
• 1:20
  Speaker C: Thank you. It's cool to be here, man.
• 1:22
  Speaker B: Yeah, man. Welcome back to New Orleans.
• 1:25
  Speaker C: Thank you.
• 1:26
  Speaker B: Saw you play at Chicki Wawa maybe a year ago or so. Something like. Right, right. That was a terrific show you had the Strip down band. Are you traveling with that same kind of instrumentation this time?
• 1:40
  Speaker C: It's a bit different in that. James Mastro, who you might know from the Bongos, years ago I met in New York, and actually about 78, I met James, you know, when I moved to New York with Nuns.
• 1:53
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:53
  Speaker C: And he was in that band, the Bongos. But he's been Ian Hunter's musical director for about 20 years now with the Ramp Band.
• 2:03
  Speaker B: Oh, cool.
• 2:04
  Speaker C: So he's opening up the show. He's got a great solo album himself that he put out. And then he plays guitar with us too, you know.
• 2:12
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 2:12
  Speaker C: Yeah. You have the same keyboard player, Scott Danbaum from Centromatic. I don't know if you've ever heard of Centromatic. They were a killer band. Out of Texas, out of Denton. And Mark Henny, who played with Black Joe Lewis for many years.
• 2:27
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 2:28
  Speaker C: He's on drums. Yeah. So those two guys are phenomenal.
• 2:32
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You know when I saw you last year, the keyboard player, and I'm watching him play, I'm going, man, this guy plays so good, man. And I went and talked to him afterwards. I said, hey, man, did you go to North Texas State? And he goes, yeah, how'd you know? I said, you just have that Lyle Mays vibe, man. You.
• 2:48
  Speaker C: He looked like.
• 2:49
  Speaker B: He goes, wow, that's really funny. But yeah, he's terrific. You know, he provides so much texture. You know, I was almost thinking, like, oh, Alejandro's found his. His Mike Garson. Exactly. You know, the keyboard player played with Bowie from, you know, starting with Aladdin Zane and, you know, all through his career, even to the very end.
• 3:11
  Speaker C: Cool that you picked up on that, because that's exactly what his thing is, man.
• 3:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, it's like a guy who understands rock, but also has a jazz sensibility, has all the jazz harmonic content at his disposal. He can insert it at will.
• 3:27
  Speaker C: He's got the chops to do anything and, you know, like he does when he's at home, when we're not touring, he does, you know, jazz standard nights by himself. He'll sit in with, you know, all kinds of people. So I love that about him because, you know, it takes the music to a completely different place, you know. Yeah, because I start out very minimally, you know, like just a few chords and, you know, the kind of music I love is simple and direct. But then he adds those flourishes that makes it sound a little more sophisticated.
• 4:01
  Speaker B: Right. Well, it's a great juxtaposition, you know, and. Yeah, yeah. It makes it so rich. So still not carrying a bass player out on the road?
• 4:10
  Speaker C: No, sir.
• 4:11
  Speaker B: No, sir. So there's still hope for me?
• 4:15
  Speaker C: Yeah, man, if there was anybody, it'd be you.
• 4:17
  Speaker B: Oh, it's very sweet of you, but.
• 4:19
  Speaker C: His left hand right now is our baseball. Sure, sure, sure.
• 4:22
  Speaker B: Well, now it's. Touring these days is so expensive, man. The hotel rooms have gone up by three times. Fees have not gone up by three times.
• 4:32
  Speaker C: Exactly.
• 4:33
  Speaker B: You know, everything. Flights, it's.
• 4:36
  Speaker C: It's.
• 4:36
  Speaker B: It's also crazy.
• 4:37
  Speaker C: It's like post Covid, you know? Yeah, it's like you said. Exactly. You know, the wages stayed the same, the hotels rose in price, gas rose in price, the bands rose in price. So it's really difficult. And that's kind of why I went to a trio, you know, I had the trio, and when you saw us a year ago, I mean, I think we've gotten. As a trio. I feel like we've gotten even stronger since then because we played so much.
• 5:06
  Speaker B: Sure. Of course.
• 5:07
  Speaker C: We did a gig the other night, the Continental. It was Rosie Flores, 75th birthday.
• 5:11
  Speaker B: Oh, nice. Lovely.
• 5:12
  Speaker C: So we played a set and, man, we were just rocking, you know, it was really tight. It's like a. It's like a really super tight rhythm section or something, because I don't solo or anything, but, you know, it's a big Sound.
• 5:26
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:28
  Speaker C: It gets the songs across, you know?
• 5:29
  Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's when it's stripped down like that, you can hear everything so well, and. And, yeah, the lyrics really come through and. And, you know, you always have such a. A way of, like, being so focused when you perform. You know, it's like you set a mood, you take a breath in the room where everybody takes the breath with you, and, you know, it's casting a spell.
• 5:55
  Speaker C: And I think that's all, you know, all the music that I loved growing up, performers that I went to go see, and especially once I moved to Austin, you know, and I got to see Townes Van Zant up close and Ely up close. And, I mean, there were nights with Towns where it was like, man, it was deep, you know, really deep, you know, and then. So, like, when I started my orchestra there, and we would play, like, a room like the Cactus Cafe, which is a small listening room some nights, you know, it would elevate, like you said, the whole room would elevate along with us, you know?
• 6:33
  Speaker B: Right.
• 6:33
  Speaker C: I love that feeling, man. That's magic to me.
• 6:36
  Speaker B: Like, certain. When you're in a performance like that, people almost don't want to clap.
• 6:42
  Speaker C: Exactly.
• 6:43
  Speaker B: They don't want to disturb. They don't want to break the spell.
• 6:46
  Speaker C: Right, right, right, right. It's cool.
• 6:49
  Speaker B: Really interesting. You know, performance is so. It really is so magical, you know, it's like what you can do. And the difference between it being totally successful and falling apart is a razor's edge, man.
• 7:02
  Speaker C: Oh, man. The thin line, man. And, you know, like, it's funny because you mentioned that sometimes people don't want to clap, right. And so you get off stage and go, what happened? We suck, or what? You know? And then someone will remind. Oh, they're listening, man. They're really listening. They're into it, you know, so it's cool.
• 7:21
  Speaker B: Well, I find audiences today are kind of spoiled from watching television anyway. They're kind of trained to not clap, even if it's something raucous, you know, they're like, oh, we're just. You just feed us and we consume. And then in many cases, they've forgotten that this is a participatory exercise, audience and performer, you know?
• 7:43
  Speaker C: You know, in those early days of, like, going to see the Stooges, you know? Right. They were so involved with the audience, you know, it was like, one. Right. The audience and the band and Iggy would always jump down into the audience, you know, and I would always run for the Back because I knew he, you know, he'd try to hit on my girlfriend, you know, or he'd start slagging me about something I was wearing. You know what I mean? You never knew it was gonna happen.
• 8:11
  Speaker B: Right?
• 8:12
  Speaker C: So. But, you know, it was so exciting to watch something like that.
• 8:16
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 8:16
  Speaker C: To see it come down like that. Yeah. Yeah.
• 8:19
  Speaker B: Well, you're talking about the early bands that, you know, that you. That you liked, I'm guessing, like, you know, Velvet Underground. Must have been.
• 8:28
  Speaker C: They were big, huge. You know, I grew up in. You know, I was born in San Antonio.
• 8:34
  Speaker B: Right, okay.
• 8:35
  Speaker C: And we left when I was six years old, and we went to Orange County.
• 8:40
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 8:41
  Speaker C: California. Orange, California, actually, was the first place we landed. And then ended up growing up in Huntington Beach. Right.
• 8:50
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 8:51
  Speaker C: So when the first Velvet album came out, Huntington beach embraced it for some reason. And there wasn't a party you couldn't go to where that first Banana record was playing, you know.
• 9:02
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 9:04
  Speaker C: And so I got to see them play at the Shrine Auditorium once, you know.
• 9:08
  Speaker B: Cool.
• 9:09
  Speaker C: This was post Kale had left, you know. But they were still amazing. Oh, yeah, they're incredible. And, yeah, the Velvet's kind of like. I really wasn't a hippie, you know, I had long hair. I was a surfer. Right.
• 9:23
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 9:24
  Speaker C: And so, like, I didn't dig the hippie thing much. You know.
• 9:28
  Speaker B: I think many of our generation. I mean, you're a little bit older than me, but even coming up, you know, I was a kid when the hippies and I. Even as a kid, I thought, God, I don't know, man.
• 9:38
  Speaker C: Yeah, you know, I. You know, I wasn't into it, but, you know, so I loved all the English bands, right? You know, the Yardbirds and Pretty Things and the Stones, of course, you know. And then in America, I loved, you know, bands like, you know, the garage rock bands, you know, like Limey and the Yanks, the East side Kids, the Count Five Shadows of Night. You know, I loved all those bands. And in Huntington beach, there was a big kind of garage rock scene, you know. And so there was a club there, a teen club, where I could see all the bands, but I got to see, like, you know, Buffalo Springfield, the Flying Burrito Brothers, you know, Love. I saw. You know, it was a good period of time.
• 10:22
  Speaker B: Yeah, man. Yeah. Golden age, for sure.
• 10:25
  Speaker C: You know, you saw Jimmy Reed and.
• 10:27
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 10:27
  Speaker C: You know, I didn't see Howlin Wolf, but he was playing the same circuit. And I used to see Albert Collins all the time. You know. He played a lot. And so, you know, there was a great. Back then, music was one thing, you know, it was either good or bad. Sure. And radio was completely different than what it is now. You know, it was kind of like an education, you know.
• 10:53
  Speaker B: Right.
• 10:53
  Speaker C: TJ's would talk about the bands and let you know why Captain Beefheart was as important as Marvin Gaye.
• 11:01
  Speaker B: You know, things like that connect the dots for you.
• 11:03
  Speaker C: A little bit Sun Raw and, you know, the Stooges or whatever, you know. So. Yeah, I love that, you know.
• 11:11
  Speaker B: So you're growing up in Huntington Beach. How long were you there? How long before you met? How did you make your way to like, you went to high school there?
• 11:20
  Speaker C: Well, I never really went to high school, but.
• 11:22
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good answer. I love that. My favorite guests have that.
• 11:27
  Speaker C: I was supposed to go to high school there. Yeah.
• 11:32
  Speaker B: Now you weren't in jail or anything, right, instead?
• 11:34
  Speaker C: Not at that point. Okay. But I went to what they called a continuation school.
• 11:41
  Speaker B: Okay. And now were you playing music at that point or interested in playing music or.
• 11:48
  Speaker C: I wasn't playing music, really. I had a guitar that my dad had gotten. My dad was a plumber. And you know, all my older brothers were musicians.
• 11:57
  Speaker B: Right.
• 11:58
  Speaker C: I know that your whole family, everybody played music. But I felt like in order to get. The only way I was gonna get my parents attention was to become a juvenile delinquent.
• 12:08
  Speaker B: Act out.
• 12:08
  Speaker C: Yeah, but you know, I was way into records. I mean, I started kind of buying records when I was just a kid, you know, And I had a cousin who would live with us or take care of me in San Antonio. And she was a big Elvis, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Solomon Burke, and you know, who else did she like? The Big Boppers.
• 12:34
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 12:36
  Speaker C: And so like I always had like 45s. Right, right. And. And so then when I moved to Huntington beach and started really getting into music, like buying records. I always had records, you know, but I wasn't playing really, you know.
• 12:51
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 12:52
  Speaker C: And then I really fell in love with filmmaking and films and I wanted to be a filmmaker with the French New Wave and German New Wave and the neoreal realists of Italian cinema and then American directors. I love Walter John Houston, I love Sam Peckinpah, you know, guys like that and the literature that we had here, you know, I fell in love with. So it was all about that for me, you know.
• 13:20
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 13:23
  Speaker C: And then like in the early 70s, I guess I moved to Hollywood and it was there that I started going to Rodney's English Disco and the Whiskey a Go Go you know, and I lived over on Franklin and Highland at the Highland Tower Apartments.
• 13:39
  Speaker B: Oh, cool.
• 13:40
  Speaker C: And it was right by the Hughes Market there on the corner. And every. It was almost like every afternoon I'd go in there, get something to eat or something, and I'd see Barbara Felden.
• 13:53
  Speaker B: Oh, nice.
• 13:54
  Speaker C: Who I would follow around the store.
• 13:56
  Speaker B: Agent 99.
• 13:57
  Speaker C: Yeah, Agent 99.
• 13:58
  Speaker B: She was lovely, wasn't she?
• 13:59
  Speaker C: Skye Saxon.
• 14:01
  Speaker B: Oh, cool.
• 14:01
  Speaker C: Because he was working at the Source, you know, he was, like, a bit. He was a hippie now.
• 14:05
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 14:06
  Speaker C: But anyway, like, you know, that culture was really important. And then I. One night, I remember my friends called me and said, patti Smith is coming. It was 1974.
• 14:19
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 14:20
  Speaker C: And we went that night and. Blew my mind. Yeah, totally. And it was just her and Richard Soule on piano and Lenny Kay on guitar, right? And here's One table is the Stooges. Another table is like, Fast Freddy and his friends, I think there was hardly anybody there. It was like a Tuesday or Wednesday or something. And in those days, also, there was no security backstage or anything. So when she got off stage, everybody just went up to the dressing room. And Lenny tells the story because he remembers me from. But me and my girlfriend were just kind of, like, up against the wall, checking it all out. Iggy's going crazy and making everybody laugh. It was really amazing. But she really kind of, like, was encouraging everyone, start a band, start a band, start a band. You know, it was, like, wild in the streets. And so that night, my girlfriend and I decided that we were going to go to San Francisco. And like, a few nights after her engagement there. We had seen the Dolls at the Whiskey, you know, There was a concert called the Trash Dance, the last Trash Dance at the Palladium. It was the death of glitter rock, okay? And it was the Dolls, the Stooges with Ray Manzerak, the GTOs, the Hollywood stars. Excuse me. And right after that, we hitchhike one night to San Francisco, Right?
• 16:00
  Speaker B: That's when you could still hitchhike.
• 16:02
  Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. Still saved it. And we made it to San Francisco, and my friend and I, Jeff, who was from the Bronx, we're gonna make a movie about the world's worst rock and roll. Beth. Kind of loosely, kind of like what Iggy wrote about the dumb, dumb boys. Kind of like that. And it's. It was called 18 and a half because it was a parody of 8 and a half by Fellini.
• 16:27
  Speaker B: Right?
• 16:28
  Speaker C: But it's about a kid who's turning into a. You know, feels that rock. And true rock and roll could only be played by adolescents. Teenagers, you know. And he's getting older and so he makes one last ditch attempt at getting a band together. So anyway, we had this band and it was my girlfriend's brother on drums who had never played drums. Jeff had never sang a band. I never really played guitar.
• 16:53
  Speaker B: Now, were you into no Wave or had you even heard that term?
• 16:57
  Speaker C: No Wave wasn't even happening, was it?
• 16:58
  Speaker B: So. But this is the no Wave ethos. Yeah, exactly.
• 17:04
  Speaker C: But you know, we were digging, you know, all those Brian Eno records, you know, Fear by Cale. Right. You know, Cluster and the Stooges, of course, you know, and the Dolls, you know that stuff, MC5, you know, all the rock and roll stuff.
• 17:21
  Speaker B: Right, right.
• 17:23
  Speaker C: And so we. We filmed one performance at this place called the Lion's Share. Did you ever play there? No, it was in San Rafael. It was a bonafide club. Like I saw Roy Buchanan there.
• 17:35
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 17:36
  Speaker C: There was a band called Clover. Did you hear that? Oh, yeah, they. Yeah, they ended up backing up Elvis.
• 17:41
  Speaker B: Right. On that first, first record.
• 17:44
  Speaker C: Yeah. So they would play. Their really great musicians would play there, you know, Boss Skaggs and all those people. They let us. Jeff was working as a bartender there, so they let us film during the day, you know, and just us and few of our crazy friends. And it was so bad, man. It was just horrible. But suddenly the bug just kind of hit us, like, oh, yeah, maybe this might be a cool thing to do rather than selling drugs on the street or whatever. You could do both, you know? Yeah, we could do. Well, we did for a while, sure, but. And then we rehearse at this Quonset hut in Terra Linda. And this woman, young girl actually, Jennifer Moreau was her name, was playing with like a Doobie Brothers cover band or something, but she would hear us making this horrendous noise out of this room, you know. And one day she knocked on the door and it was this gorgeous blonde young girl, Jennifer. And she says, I want to hook up with you guys, you know.
• 18:52
  Speaker B: Nice.
• 18:53
  Speaker C: And she was a serious musician.
• 18:55
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 18:57
  Speaker C: And so that was the beginning of the nons, you know.
• 19:00
  Speaker B: So did she kind of train you guys up or you just figured it out on your own?
• 19:05
  Speaker C: I think she liked the fact that we couldn't play, but she could, you know, and that was happening a lot, like during those days, you know, like Tony Williams was hanging around, you know.
• 19:15
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 19:16
  Speaker C: And he loved the punk rock guys, you know, because they make a noise that was killer, you know.
• 19:22
  Speaker B: Right.
• 19:22
  Speaker C: So, yeah, it was that kind of period of time. So anyway, that became the Nuns, you know, that's how we started.
• 19:28
  Speaker B: So cool. So you guys start playing, playing in San Francisco all the time to establish a reputation there and. And the, you know, the nuns enter the. The worldwide, you know, rock and roll zeitgeist. You guys played on the Sex Pistols very last show at Wetterland as they broke up.
• 19:50
  Speaker C: Yeah. So we played that show, which we really shouldn't have been on because Jeff, Bill Graham was thinking of managing the nuns. Right. We had a song called Decadent Chew, you know, that was written by Jeff, who was Jewish. And it wasn't an anti Semite kind of song. It was just funny. And Graham said he would manage us if we stopped playing that song.
• 20:14
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 20:15
  Speaker C: And we said, no, we're not going to stop playing the song. But we had a lot of great gigs, man. Like, you know, we played the Mabuhay Gardens all the time, you know.
• 20:24
  Speaker B: Right. So that was a very fertile time in. In San Francisco. They had like, the residents were. Were out there.
• 20:29
  Speaker C: They were great, man.
• 20:31
  Speaker B: Yeah. You saw them a bunch?
• 20:32
  Speaker C: I saw them, yeah. And I. I love the bands that were happening. The Dills and the Nuns played our first gig at Mabuhay together. And then there were bands like the Avengers and the Ready Maze. Did you know Jonathan Postal? He lived here for a while. He's a photographer and guitar maker. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, he had a band there, you know, it was just killer bounce. Cool time.
• 20:57
  Speaker B: Right.
• 20:58
  Speaker C: And all the LA bands were coming down, the Weirdos and you know, all of them.
• 21:03
  Speaker B: Right. So cool. So you guys are successful. Start going out on the road tour.
• 21:11
  Speaker C: We never went out on the road.
• 21:12
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 21:12
  Speaker C: We never left San Francisco.
• 21:14
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 21:14
  Speaker C: We went straight to New York.
• 21:16
  Speaker B: Oh, all right.
• 21:16
  Speaker C: Because we would like our. One of our singers, Dietrich, was actually in a band with Dee Dee Ramone early on. Pre Ramones. Right. So like, we opened up for all those bands, the Ramones, the Dictators, you know, Blondie. We played with a lot.
• 21:34
  Speaker B: In New York.
• 21:35
  Speaker C: No. Oh, in San Francisco. Okay. So then when we got to New York and played stuff, CBs, you know, it was a killer night because there's Johnny Thunders, there's Jerry Nolan, there's Blondie, there's Debbie, there's Chris, there's David Byrne. And it was awesome. It was just one night. I always tell this story, but it was really magical for me. It was like we were at Max's watching the Heartbreakers play. Johnny Thunders. We're sitting at a table with this Guy Francesco Scavullo, who did all the interview covers. And there's Andy Warhol, Deborah Harry, Chris Stein, George Clinton and the nuns watching the Heartbreaker at Maxis Kansas City.
• 22:19
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 22:20
  Speaker C: So, yeah, you know, and then the band broke up. They went back to. And I started playing with Judy. Nylon. New York. Yeah.
• 22:28
  Speaker B: Again, a very fertile time in New York. Everybody's there. The Cramps are there, you know, all these bands that you already mentioned. And New York is all bombed out and abandoned.
• 22:41
  Speaker C: It was a different New York. Yeah, it was a different New York. And we were living in the Chelsea Hotel, too. Right, right. So the night that we played with the Sex Pistols in San Francisco, Sid came to our house at the nun's house. Right. We lived over on Hayes in to visit Darrow, you know. And he came and hung out with us all night long, doing horrible things.
• 23:04
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 23:06
  Speaker C: And then the next day he took off. And we didn't see him for a while, but we had a great time with him. He says, when you come to London, you're gonna stay with me. Which sounded kind of frightening. But, you know, he was sweet to us.
• 23:19
  Speaker B: So I was gonna say so in person. He wasn't the kind of numbskull or, how was he when you were hanging out? Personable.
• 23:30
  Speaker C: To me, he just seemed like a very, you know, kind of kid that was in love with rock and roll.
• 23:37
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 23:37
  Speaker C: But was being pressured to be something other than what he was, you know. And I don't think he could deal with it in the way that he was fragile, it seemed, you know.
• 23:47
  Speaker B: Sensitive boy.
• 23:48
  Speaker C: Sensitive boy. So by the time we got to New York one day, we were living in the Chelsea, Right. And my girlfriend and I came back from a day out and there was Johnny Thunders and Jerry and Sid and Nancy in the lobby checking in. Sid and Nancy. So they became our neighbors, you know. And I would see them one day. Do you know who Quentin Chris was?
• 24:15
  Speaker B: Oh, sure.
• 24:15
  Speaker C: Yes. So, yeah, the naked civil servant.
• 24:18
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 24:18
  Speaker C: Yeah. He was staying there. And this great clothes designer, Charles James, was there and. And Sid, Nancy and my girlfriend are in the elevator, you know, just going up to our rooms, talking about, you know, the cool produce we saw somewhere or whatever. You know. But it was a great time. And then, of course, one day, my friend and I got a call from Nancy Spungeon to come up to the room, come down to the room and to help her with Sid. And he was not in great shape. He's on the bed, passing in and out, and he's trying to do something That's. It wasn't good, you know. And there was another guy there who was kind of the. The dealer at the hotel. And I remember the room because it had like. Like a platinum record or gold album. Sex Pistols on the. On the dresser.
• 25:25
  Speaker B: He had his gold album with a.
• 25:26
  Speaker C: Big wad of money. And they had just bought knives in Times Square, and they had just gotten a kitten, and Nancy's trying to. We couldn't help him. Yeah. So we left. And then I think it was like two days later that it happened. And I came up out of the subway and went to the hotel, and there was a big crowd of people, ambulances and cop cars. And then the doors swung open and two cops were escorting Sid out, and they took him off to Rikers, you know. Oh, geez. But. Because Judy Nylon, I don't know if you know much about her, but she was a wonderful artist who had played with Patty Paladin. Are you familiar with her? I know the name, yeah. They had a band called Snatch in London during the punk. That first wave of punk rock bands. Right. They lived in London and her. And do you know Kate Simon by any chance? She was a great photographer, but they all went to London to marry Ray Davies.
• 26:30
  Speaker B: Okay. That's a long line.
• 26:32
  Speaker C: Along with Chrissy Hine.
• 26:33
  Speaker B: Right. A long line of girls trying to.
• 26:34
  Speaker C: They were all friends, Right. And anyway, so they had a band, and it was a really cool band that was produced by Eno.
• 26:44
  Speaker B: Oh, cool.
• 26:45
  Speaker C: And she had sang with Eno, was her boyfriend, actually, you know, And I played with her in New York. And, like, I don't know if you ever heard of the Bush Tetras.
• 26:54
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 26:54
  Speaker C: Yeah. So Pat Place was the other guitar player in the band along with me. And it was a killer band, great time, and. But she introduced me to a totally different world because. Because we were playing art galleries, we're playing the Kitchen, we're playing the Mud Club, you know, all these different kind of venues along with the regular CVs and stuff. Right. But, you know, introduced me to this whole different world, you know, more of.
• 27:21
  Speaker B: A performance art kind of bent to it.
• 27:23
  Speaker C: She was more of a performance artist, I would say. Yeah. Very, very wonderful, beautiful woman. Yeah.
• 27:29
  Speaker B: So is that kind of the first time you're seeing that. That firsthand, that aspect of stuff that made an impression on you as far as performance? As far as.
• 27:37
  Speaker C: Exactly.
• 27:38
  Speaker B: You know, like how you can contextualize different things?
• 27:43
  Speaker C: And I got sidetracked in a way in that while I was living in New York, Chip called me Chip. Kinman called me one day and said, the deals have broken up. Right. We want to see Rank and File. Originally started this kind of just offshoot band which was Tony Kinman, myself, T. Trix singing, and the drummer from the Nuns, you know. And we just did like Bo Diddley songs and Hank Williams songs. We did Joe Higgs songs. Just a record collection. Songs we could learn, we did. Right. And it was just kind of fun to get away from both of our bands, which we're starting. You know, you can always kind of feel when it's like, I need a break.
• 28:26
  Speaker B: It's getting to be work.
• 28:27
  Speaker C: Yeah. It's not happening, you know. And then. So that was Rank and File in San Francisco. Well, Chip comes out to New York and lives with me in a five floor walk up on the east side. And we start Rank and File in New York. And Barry Myers, do you know him? Scratchy Myers, he was the Clash dj. Okay. And he was in Rude Boy.
• 28:54
  Speaker B: Right, right.
• 28:55
  Speaker C: Kevin Foley, who played drums, and Judy Nylon Span with me. That became Rank and File. And, you know, we went in a completely different direction than what Judy and I were doing, you know, and we were trying to kind of, you know, they would. They probably wouldn't like this, but it was kind of like we ended up being something like the Bobby Fuller Four sometimes.
• 29:17
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 29:18
  Speaker C: Which is great.
• 29:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:19
  Speaker C: But they didn't really want to say they were country. But we were listening to country and trying to, you know, and then we had, you know, punk rock roots. I mean, you know.
• 29:32
  Speaker B: Right.
• 29:32
  Speaker C: So somewhere along the way that kind of married it, you know, became Rank.
• 29:37
  Speaker B: And File right now. Now, what were the. What was the reaction when you would go out and play?
• 29:43
  Speaker C: Not great. No, not great.
• 29:46
  Speaker B: Nobody was playing country music in that context.
• 29:49
  Speaker C: Well, at that time, the only other people that were doing it were Jason and Scorchers.
• 29:54
  Speaker B: Okay. They were already playing.
• 29:56
  Speaker C: They were in Nashville.
• 29:57
  Speaker B: Right.
• 29:57
  Speaker C: But they were kind of different than us because they were really kind of speeding it up and, you know, kind of more metal y in a way, I think, right. Something. I don't know. But it was just different. And I, you know, I dug them, but they was different, you know. And so we did tour de cross country. When we played San Francisco the first time as Rank and File, you know, they were throwing beer cans. They hated us, you know, so you know that it wasn't popular, you know.
• 30:30
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 30:30
  Speaker C: And then we broke up. That band broke up on the way back from Vancouver on our first tour. And Tony, we picked up Tony along the way and we went to. Back home to New York and just started working on songs. Tony's great songwriter. And then decided that Austin was where we should go. Okay. So that's when we moved.
• 30:56
  Speaker B: Had you spent time in Austin before?
• 30:58
  Speaker C: You know, having been born in Texas, I hadn't been back since 1957.
• 31:05
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 31:06
  Speaker C: So. But I fell in love with it right away. Austin in those days was, you know, it was different.
• 31:12
  Speaker B: Very different place than it is even when I started going there 30 years ago. And it's different now than 30 years ago. By.
• 31:21
  Speaker C: By. And so we decided, okay, let's. And so we packed everything to the van for the Connor line. Van. My girlfriend Bobby didn't want to go, but I kind of talked her into it. We had a cat, you know, that we took along with us and made it to Austin and suddenly met this community of people that was just amazing.
• 31:45
  Speaker B: Yeah. Like who was there?
• 31:48
  Speaker C: Townes was there. Guy Clark was there. Jimmy Dale was there. Butch Hancock was there. Nancy Griffith. Lucinda was busking.
• 31:58
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 31:59
  Speaker C: You know, and Pat me. And then there were the big boys, the Dicks, you know, and bands like that. Some new wave bands, you know. Right.
• 32:11
  Speaker B: So this is early 80s.
• 32:12
  Speaker C: It was 1980. 80.
• 32:14
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 32:15
  Speaker C: Yeah, man.
• 32:17
  Speaker B: So. And rent was dirt cheap, I'm imagining.
• 32:20
  Speaker C: And I had a cool little house in Hyde Park, 135amonth. It was so sweet, you know, With a creek running behind it. Yeah, man. You know, it was killer. And I fell in love with it. And I was just so happy to be back in Texas too, you know.
• 32:34
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:35
  Speaker C: And so we did Rank and File and we got pretty popular, pretty successful. You know, we were on Slash Records and became Warner Brothers, you know, it was weird for me because I never got into it thinking I was going to become like a country western guitar player, you know.
• 32:55
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 32:56
  Speaker C: I knew what that was. And I knew I couldn't be it. I knew I didn't want to be it. So I was still playing a Les Paul and a half stack Marshall and stuff, you know, and they were kind of frowning upon it, you know, the boys. So I remember as we were getting more popular, the management that we were with in Austin picked up Lone Justice. Right. So we tour with them a lot and they were starting to pick up a lot of heat and stuff, you know. And we had a bad gig one night in Sacramento, I'll never forget it. And they called me into the room, started. I was kind of like the George Harrison of the band in that.
• 33:36
  Speaker B: Oh, they could whip on you.
• 33:37
  Speaker C: Yeah, I was the whipping Boy. So I just said, yeah, I can't do this. Yes, you know, I'm not doing it, you know, and called home, said I'm quitting, you know, I can't take it. And they dropped me off at the Tropicana in LA and they went off with other people. And UB40 and the Leroy brothers were there to record their first album with Craig Leon, you know. And I just hung out with them the whole week, just them. And I started thinking, what am I going to do? You know. And by that time, and I'll be honest with you, my confidence had kind of dwindled, like, okay, maybe I am a shitty guitar.
• 34:19
  Speaker B: When you have people brow beating you every night and giving you shitty looks, how else can you gonna feel?
• 34:24
  Speaker C: And I hadn't written any songs yet, so what am I gonna do? And I called up Chris Morris, you know, Chris in la? Yeah. And I said, I'm thinking of calling my brother Javier to start a band.
• 34:35
  Speaker B: You know, who had been in the zeros, right.
• 34:38
  Speaker C: So Javier was working in a restaurant, washing dishes and stuff and said, okay, let's get Nicky Beat from the Weirdos on drums and you know, we'll start a band. And we talked about it, you know. And I'll never forget the road back trip back to Austin from LA with. I had to go back with the. The band in the, in the van.
• 35:01
  Speaker B: Oh, oh, the band Slim.
• 35:05
  Speaker C: Yeah. And I was drinking, you know, I had a fifth of something, sure. And I'm drinking just getting messed up. And I had found the song Foggy Notion by the Velvet Underground. I just played it over and over and over. I was driving them crazy, you know, And I said, but this is what I want my band to be like, you know, I want a band that's a rock and roll band with kind of literate lyrics, you know, telling stories. But to be a rock and roll, I wanted to rock, you know. Right. And Javier was great like that. So when he finally got to Austin, we had this really cool band because we didn't. Javier could solo, but we weren't really about that. And I played like a Strat with a lot of reverb and it was kind of more openly desert, like ambient, you know, really cool sound. We had Denny degorio from who played with Jormikakonen on bass and a drummer from Austin, Keith. It was really cool sound. And then we got offered a deal with CBS with David Kahn. Do you know David?
• 36:17
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:18
  Speaker C: And David. And we went and did it, but they didn't of course, they didn't want the rhythm section. Right. So my brother and I went and did. Was horrible. Yeah, they didn't like it, we didn't like it. And on the way home, I said, I know this guitar player, man. We should get him. It was John D. Graham.
• 36:36
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 36:37
  Speaker C: And we got him. And then Ray Wash, him from the big boys, who ended up playing with Ministry and all kinds of bands, was our drummer. But anyway, that's where the True Believers took off.
• 36:47
  Speaker B: Nice.
• 36:48
  Speaker C: Yeah, so.
• 36:49
  Speaker B: So that's like. That's like 82 or something. That.
• 36:52
  Speaker C: That. Yeah, like 83, something like that.
• 36:55
  Speaker B: And. And you guys toured as the. The True Believers with all kind of band. Los Lobos.
• 37:00
  Speaker C: And we were like, los Lobos, little brother. For. For years.
• 37:05
  Speaker B: And those guys are so sweet. I'm sure they were telling you whatever they could tell you, you know, they were the best. Yeah.
• 37:11
  Speaker C: They would buy us hotel rooms.
• 37:12
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:13
  Speaker C: Because we didn't have money for the hotel room. Right. And, you know, they just took us under their wing, man. I mean, like, we did all of the, you know, first three albums with them, it seemed, you know.
• 37:26
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:26
  Speaker C: A lot of it, you know, we. When we'd go to LA and play, they'd invite us to, like, weddings that they were playing.
• 37:33
  Speaker B: Playing.
• 37:33
  Speaker C: And, you know. You know, we go to these out in east la. We'd go to hang out with them, you know, eat mole and whatnot. Right. Watch them play. They were. They were just especially, like. You know, all of them were great, but. Yeah, Conrad and Caesar and David, you know, David really loved us, you know. Yeah. And so we would all hang out, you know, just hang. Have fun, man. Right. We were chasing them around. They were in the T Bird, the Fabulous Thunderbirds bus. Right.
• 38:05
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 38:06
  Speaker C: And we still had a van, and we were doing like 43 shows in 45 days, it seemed so. Like, we would put on a one. You remember ROAR Records?
• 38:16
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
• 38:16
  Speaker C: Yeah. We found this international speed metal cassette that they had, and we just put it on and just try to catch up with the van because they had.
• 38:26
  Speaker B: A driver drive overnight. You had to drive yourself.
• 38:29
  Speaker C: It was crazy because in that van, that bus that they had, I would ride in it sometimes, but if you had to take a piss, they would hold you by the belt buckle of open the front door.
• 38:40
  Speaker B: So you didn't piss in the toilet?
• 38:42
  Speaker C: Yeah, no. You had to piss out the door.
• 38:45
  Speaker B: Not even had a.
• 38:46
  Speaker C: As you're moving down the highway. She's crazy.
• 38:50
  Speaker B: We always take a little break about this time in the Feral Zone. So all you people out there, go get yourself another cocktail and we'll be right back.
• 39:01
  Speaker A: I walk, I crawl but never run Sometimes I fall away like the Sept.
• 39:12
  Speaker C: Sun.
• 39:15
  Speaker A: Will I swim my sail surf but I never drown Everybody says they.
• 39:23
  Speaker C: Love me but I don't know why.
• 39:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know why.
• 39:34
  Speaker C: I don't.
• 39:35
  Speaker A: Know why While watch you walk like.
• 39:45
  Speaker C: A rhythm train.
• 39:49
  Speaker A: I love the way you kiss I just can't stand the.
• 39:53
  Speaker C: Pain.
• 39:56
  Speaker A: Well, I believe in truth but sometimes I'm lying Everybody says they love.
• 40:05
  Speaker C: Me but I don't know why.
• 40:09
  Speaker B: I.
• 40:09
  Speaker A: Don'T know why yeah, I don't know.
• 40:17
  Speaker C: Why.
• 40:30
  Speaker B: And we're back. Back inside the Feral Zone. I am Renee Komen, back with our guest, Mr. Alejandro Escovedo. Now, Alejandro, I know you're new to the podcast, so you may not be familiar, but all our listeners know that this is a listener supported operation. And we have a couple of links in the show notes of every show, PayPal and Venmo link as well as we have those links in the all the Facebook posts that we use to promote the show. And listeners, listeners use those links to buy us cocktails, buy us new. You can see I'm on my ninth composition book, so we use a lot of pens. Anyway. Also in the links to those links we have the Patreon link there we have a handful of patrons that are supporting us week in and week out. Also we have the Troubled men podcast T shirt link. You can avail yourself of dress your family in trouble men podcast T shirts and what else? Follow us on social media, Instagram, Facebook and rate review and subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening to it. Give us five stars. Helps us a lot, costs you nothing. Let's see, that's about enough of that. But Alejandro, I don't know if you're aware of this, the history of this location that we're in here.
• 41:47
  Speaker C: I'm not.
• 41:47
  Speaker B: It has this looms large in the memories of every New Orleanian who was alive in the or who was aware in the early 70s and because in 1973, like January, this was the location of sniper incident where this Guy took over one room in the 18th floor of this hotel and started a bunch of fires and then went to other rooms and started fires. And then as the fire engines started showing up, he had all these sniper rifles and he started shooting at the firemen as they approached and then had a police response and they were shooting at the police. And now my wife was right across the street at the public library which is right over there. And. And she's coming out, and she sees all this stuff going on and hears shots going on, so they go take cover and evacuate the area. But this was all. Of course, the news cameras come down here, and nobody knows what's going on. And since it's the guys operating from a whole bunch of different rooms, they thought it was a bunch of different people. And this was, right, maybe five months after the Munich Olympics with the takeover of the. You know, the murder of Israeli Olympic athletes there. So it looked like a similar kind of deal, you know, some kind of. And that went on for, like, overnight. And a whole bunch of people got killed and police officers and other people just. It was a whole scene. So this guy, Mark Essex, everybody knows that name in New Orleans, is the New Orleans sniper. So, yes, it was right in this very hotel.
• 43:47
  Speaker C: What year was that guy? Do you remember the sniper? There was a sniper in Austin, too.
• 43:52
  Speaker B: Yeah. I'm not sure.
• 43:53
  Speaker C: The guy that went up in the tower. Tower, right. I mean, he was hitting people far, far away, right?
• 44:00
  Speaker B: Well, I think he was, like, former Marine or something.
• 44:02
  Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
• 44:03
  Speaker B: Well, this guy was like former Navy or some kind of, you know, service guy. But, yeah. And it was live on TV for 28 hours. And now I was talking to my wife about this recently, and she was saying, you watched all that? I say, I watched. We all watched all of it. She's like, my parents wouldn't let me watch that.
• 44:22
  Speaker C: It's wild. I had no idea that this was that place.
• 44:29
  Speaker B: They had a different name at the time, but exact same building. I mean, exactly. Exact same structure.
• 44:35
  Speaker C: Well, I'll walk carefully through this area.
• 44:38
  Speaker B: Well, it's interesting that you found this place. When you told me, I was like, oh, man, I wonder if he knows. So, anyway, we're safe today. So back to our guest, Mr. Alejandro Escovedo. So you're living in Austin. You have the true believers. Now your contract gets bought out by emi.
• 45:01
  Speaker C: Right.
• 45:01
  Speaker B: Now, did you have more success with EMI than the Sax Pistols did?
• 45:05
  Speaker C: Not much.
• 45:06
  Speaker B: Not much.
• 45:07
  Speaker C: Originally, we were on Rounder Records, and then EMI took us from Rounder, and we made that second record with Jeff Glixman, who had just produced the Georgia Satellites. Okay. And had a hit with the Keep your hands to yourself. And we made a cool album. It was much better album than the first one. But then we got. There was a chopping block at EMI in which, like, Nona Hendricks, I think the Nevilles got cut on that same one. Bunch of bands, like, 13 bands in one day or something. Wow. You know, and we were women of them, so we got. We got drop. And the album was in limbo for years until Ryko Dis put it out, I think in the 80s, somewhere in the late 80s, you know, and they put it out as a twofer with our first record and. And that unreleased album, the band had stopped playing. Yeah, we had broken. We had stopped playing pretty much. But we. We did reform for the release of that record. It was incredible. It was great. Yeah. Yeah. But.
• 46:20
  Speaker B: But this Usher Zen, the beginning of.
• 46:24
  Speaker C: Your solo career right at the end of that. You know, it's funny, man. I put so much into the True Believers. And because it was my brother, I felt really invested in that band, you know? And so when it didn't work and he was the first one to leave, he went and started playing with Will Sexton.
• 46:46
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 46:46
  Speaker C: Will in the Kill. And, you know, I just kind of went home and we tried to kind of keep it together without Javier, but it wasn't the same. JD Foster joined us from Dwight Span, but it wasn't the same. It was. Just wasn't happening. And then we. I went to work at Sound Warehouse. Okay. That's what I had to do. I had a kid, my wife at home. So I went to work and really wasn't sure what I was going to do, honestly. And then I just started. I met a young man named Christopher Knight who worked there too. He was much younger, but he loved Brian Eno. Played synthesizer and keyboard. So we started messing around together a little bit. Buick McCain started to play a little bit.
• 47:40
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 47:42
  Speaker C: And then what form does the Alejandro Escovedo Orchestra started to come together? Then I went to Waterloo to work, you know, and the orchestra was playing around. The orchestra was great, man.
• 47:55
  Speaker B: It was awesome. Now that's when I start seeing you. Cause the Iguanas are playing Continental Club and South by Southwest. And, you know, we would always catch you and. Yeah, I remember some of those outdoor gigs with the orchestra. Really tremendous, man.
• 48:12
  Speaker C: Yeah, it was great. You know, I. You know, I used it like. I would say, it's just a workshop, right? And so I would say we have a gig at the Hole in the wall, 10 o'. Clock. No rehearsal, just come and we just start playing. And I'd invite, like, jazz musicians, salsa, Latin musicians, rock musicians, symphony people. Symphony people. I. Spot was in my band. Do you remember Spot?
• 48:38
  Speaker B: No.
• 48:39
  Speaker C: He was a producer for SST for Black Flag Records.
• 48:43
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 48:44
  Speaker C: He was in. He played. What did he play? He played bass clarinet. I had. Did you know Lisa Mednick?
• 48:53
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
• 48:53
  Speaker C: She played sax in my band.
• 48:55
  Speaker B: Really?
• 48:56
  Speaker C: Danny. Danny Barnes, who was in the Bad Livers, played. Mark Rubin, played.
• 49:01
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 49:02
  Speaker C: I had a. It was like this turnstile of musicians. They were just great, you know. So I had. Sometimes it was 15 pieces. It was like Van Morrison's band or something.
• 49:13
  Speaker B: Everybody. Everybody made $10.
• 49:15
  Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. It's horrible. At the end of the night, you know, doling out five to ten bucks.
• 49:23
  Speaker B: And then we're doing this for the love of IT people.
• 49:26
  Speaker C: Absolutely no other reason. And then working at Waterloo, they started that label, Watermelon Records, and they said, would you like to make a record? Yeah. And I remember Steven Bruton used to come to the store. I don't know if you know who Stephen was. Stephen played with Bonnie Raitt.
• 49:49
  Speaker B: Oh, okay. All right.
• 49:51
  Speaker C: And played with Chris Christopherson for 15 years, you know. Oh, okay. He was from Fort Worth, Texas. And Stephen was this very debonair, handsome looking, like, Sam Shepard kind of looking guy. And he played with Chris, you know, and knew everybody, right? And I would see him. I lived in South Austin, and Bobby and I lived there on the street called La Casa. And Stephen lived down the road in this house that always had, like, these vintage BMWs in front, you know, And I could see through the window, like, beautiful artwork and neon and stuff. And. And he'd run by and he'd always be very like, hey, man, what's. What's happening? But I was very suspicious. I didn't know who he was, you know, and I didn't. I thought, either he's a coke dealer or a cop, you know, I wasn't quite sure. And he'd invite us to parties. We wouldn't go because I said, no, no, man, there's that up bunch of big cocaine parties. And it turned out. So then I asked someone, who is this guy Stephen Bruden? They go, oh, he's a really amazing studio musician from la. They said, you know. Which, you know, in punk rock circles, you know, that wasn't cool either.
• 51:06
  Speaker B: Right, right.
• 51:06
  Speaker C: So. But then I'll never forget one day, there was this beautiful redhead in Waterloo Records looking at magazines. And I'm telling my friends, hey, I'm gonna go talk to this girl, you know? And just as I'm about to approach her, Stephen walks up and puts his arm. It was his girlfriend, of course, but we laughed. And. And when it came time to make the record, he said he would help me make the record. My wife had just died. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. So I had a nine month old baby and a nine year old daughter. Oh, man. So I'm working, trying to take care of my kids and it was really a crazy time. And she committed suicide. So it was extremely difficult. And he told me, you're not going to record the orchestra. It's too big. I want you to make a record with some. Somebody so that you can go out and play with it by yourself or duo, trio, you know. But this is not going to happen. And people love the orchestra in Austin, you know, so some people were disappointed. But we made that record, Gravity.
• 52:21
  Speaker B: Right.
• 52:21
  Speaker C: He chose a musician. So I had Billy Ginn on piano, who played with Leonard Cohen. Right. I had Dennis Kent. No, I had Frosty on drums.
• 52:30
  Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 52:32
  Speaker C: Killer with HE Michaels. You know, I greet guitar players. Charlie came, Charlie Sexton came and played. The band was amazing. And we made that record, Gravity. Yeah, terrific record, man. That was my first record. But so here I am working at Waterloo and I'm selling my own record to people.
• 52:52
  Speaker B: Really puts it all in perspective.
• 52:53
  Speaker C: Yeah. And. But then suddenly all these reviews started coming in that were very positive, you know, and. And eventually I had to go start touring again, you know, But I hadn't played out the wild other than playing at home. And it was rough at first, you know.
• 53:13
  Speaker B: Now what kind of band would you take out on to tour?
• 53:16
  Speaker C: Glenn Fukunaga on drum, on bass. Chris Searles on drums. And Bradley Cop, did you know him? He played with Joey and Jimmy Dale and those guys. He was on guitar. It's a good band.
• 53:30
  Speaker B: Standard rock band, Formation rock band.
• 53:32
  Speaker C: But I. I wasn't used to being the front man and just learning kind of feeling my way, you know, and we weren't. We weren't really. I don't know, it wasn't happening yet.
• 53:47
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 53:48
  Speaker C: But playing good gigs, right? You know, Fitzgerald's in Chicago, people would.
• 53:52
  Speaker B: Turn out to see you. People knew your reputation and loved the record and.
• 53:56
  Speaker C: Yeah, but it was rough at first, you know, but we were touring, trying to make a go of it, you know. And then I made the second record, which was 13 years with Steven again. And that band was killer too, you know. And the songwriting was starting to get a little stronger too, you know, but it was still about what had happened to my wife, you know? Yeah. Then we made a third record with these Hands and that was cool. I had Jennifer Warrens come and sing with me.
• 54:26
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 54:27
  Speaker C: Tebow and Burnett come played with me. We had a great time making that. Right.
• 54:32
  Speaker B: And you've had. Had so many illustrious collaborators across your career.
• 54:39
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It's crazy.
• 54:40
  Speaker B: Now, you were mentioning on the break that. That you're actually putting together a memoir.
• 54:45
  Speaker C: I am. I'm writing a. I call it a mythical memoir.
• 54:48
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 54:49
  Speaker C: I like it because, you know, you remember some things the way you remember them. It's not necessarily the way it was, you know, And I think we all create our own myth in a way, you know?
• 55:02
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 55:03
  Speaker C: And so.
• 55:03
  Speaker B: Well, all the best writers, all the. All the greatest characters in history are excellent at self mythologizing.
• 55:11
  Speaker C: Well, look at Dylan, you know? Yes.
• 55:12
  Speaker B: Yeah. Look at Caesar.
• 55:14
  Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Look at, you know, all of them, you know.
• 55:19
  Speaker B: Churchill.
• 55:19
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Churchill. All of them, you know, and so that's kind of what it's about. And it's. It's about the rock and roll life, but it's also about my family and growing up and the way I did in the times that I did.
• 55:33
  Speaker B: Right.
• 55:34
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
• 55:35
  Speaker B: Such a transitional period, man.
• 55:36
  Speaker C: Yeah. It was crazy, you know. So, you know, I didn't tell you this in the beginning, but it real quick, which just says a lot about my family. When we left Texas, we were told that we were going on a vacation. And so it was just my mom and dad, my grandma and my dad was a guy who would party a lot. You know, he'd be gone for long periods of time.
• 56:03
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 56:04
  Speaker C: And my mom had hired a man actually to drive us to California, get away from him. And he found out and said, no, it's not happening. I'm driving you. You know, so.
• 56:13
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 56:14
  Speaker C: He drove us, they said the pack light, you know, and we drove and we had this old, like probably a 1951 sedan of some kind, you know, and we drove to Orange where he had relatives. And then one day he shook hands with a man and we owned a home in Orange, California, and we never went back to Texas. And we left everything behind, man. You know. Wow. You know, San Antonio in those days was almost all Mexican, you know, so it was like Mexico. And family, I had family, you know, and we, you know, playing in the riverbeds. And my dad's uncle had a bakery and go get fresh pandulse and tortillas and stuff. And suddenly all that was gone. We were in Orange county. And, you know, as you know, Orange county is probably one of the most conservative counties in America.
• 57:13
  Speaker B: Right, right. Very white.
• 57:15
  Speaker C: Very white. Blue eyed, blond, blue eyed. I wanted to be a surfer. That was not cool for a Mexican kid, you know?
• 57:21
  Speaker B: Yeah. Was that culture shock? Was it you run into a lot of ugly racism there at that time.
• 57:28
  Speaker C: You know, suddenly we were called beaners and wetbacks and spicks and nobody ever called us out in San Antonio. And then, you know, my name is Alejandro Escovelo. So in school, the teachers, I would always cringe when the roll call came up because they would destroy my name. So finally one teacher said, you're not Alejandro, you're Alex. You know, so for years I was Alex and I hated that name. Yeah. And then, you know, when the 60s came about, took back my name.
• 58:02
  Speaker B: Right.
• 58:03
  Speaker C: So they take away your language, they take away your culture, they take away your name, your identity. Yeah, yeah.
• 58:09
  Speaker B: Your self worth.
• 58:10
  Speaker C: Exactly. So that was part of that.
• 58:13
  Speaker B: Well, that had to set you up for punk rock though, right?
• 58:15
  Speaker C: Well, yeah, I was pretty pissed off by the time that.
• 58:19
  Speaker B: Sufficient chip on your shoulder.
• 58:21
  Speaker C: Yeah. You know.
• 58:23
  Speaker B: Wow. Man, I can't wait to read that book.
• 58:25
  Speaker C: Oh, thank you. I hope it turns out well.
• 58:27
  Speaker B: Oh, I'm, I'm, I'm.
• 58:28
  Speaker C: It's. It's.
• 58:29
  Speaker B: It's a fascinating story. You're a great writer. I don't see how it can turn out any other way. Well, well, let's fast forward to your. Your most recent record because I love the record. It's.
• 58:40
  Speaker C: It's a.
• 58:41
  Speaker B: It's one of a series that you've done with this Italian band.
• 58:44
  Speaker C: Yep.
• 58:45
  Speaker B: Don Antonio band.
• 58:46
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 58:47
  Speaker B: And listening to this record, I'm, I'm.
• 58:51
  Speaker C: Wow.
• 58:52
  Speaker B: It's so rocking. But it's also has a, you know, a quiet and menacing quality to it at times, you know, and, and I was like, oh, let's see. Alejandro was in New York about the same time as Suicide.
• 59:07
  Speaker C: Right. I bet Suicide's big.
• 59:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, man. Well, I hear a lot of, of that, that, that, that sort of approach in this record.
• 59:15
  Speaker C: The first time I saw Suicide was in San Francisco. They had gone to come to the Mabua. Yeah. And blew our minds. Yeah, just blew our minds, you know. And then when I was living in New York, you know, those guys were around. So. Yeah, that, that whole period of time was huge in the echo. Dancing record. Yes. Yeah.
• 59:33
  Speaker B: Yeah. And. And then towards the, towards the end a few songs, I'm like, oh, wow, he's getting into some Scott Walker here, huh?
• 59:40
  Speaker C: Oh, I'd love Scott Walker.
• 59:41
  Speaker B: I could tell, you know, some of the ways you're, the melodies you're singing across this, you know, kind of harsh background, but, you know, kind of beautiful melody your voice is sitting on top of in this other space. And it reminds me Very much of the later Scott Walker records.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker C: I love Scott Walker, but, you know, a lot of that I have to give credit to the Italians, you know. So the way that record came about as I had made the Crossing with Don Antonio, right, Which was an album we made in Italy also. And I spent a month in Italy recording in this farmhouse out in the country.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker B: How did you get hooked up? How did you. How did you get the idea to do that in the first place?
• 1:00:25
  Speaker C: Do you know Chris Meltzer? I know that Metzler. Chris Mitzler, he's a guy who is in London.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker C: But I met him through Chuck Profit. Yeah.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker B: Good friend of mine. Good friend of both of ours. And you and Chuck had.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker C: He.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker B: Chuck co. Wrote your.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker C: Your Real Animal.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker B: Real Animal record, right?
• 1:00:44
  Speaker C: We actually did two, three, maybe two, three records together. But Chuck had always mentioned Chris Metzler. And I was about to go. Go tour Europe and couldn't afford a band to go across because the days of, Remember, like when they used to fly us over and pay for like a festival would be the. The root gig, you know, but they would pay for the flights and everything.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker B: You know, TWA airline.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker C: And nothing was happening like that anymore. So he goes, why don't you pick up a band here, right? So he gave me a choice of three bands. Two were English and they were great bands too, but they're very Americana like bands, you know. And then this Italian band, which was different, very kind of like, you know, the Italians are always searching for melody. And these players were just amazing and kind of atmosphere. They love soundtrack music too, you know. So it just was this great combination of stuff along with, you know, an appreciation for the blues and appreciation for rock and roll and all that stuff. Like in Italy, like, the cornerstones are probably like Jimmy Vaughn and those guys. And then Bruce Springsteen is huge over there. So they. They dug the songwriting aspect of it too. Towns and those guys are huge in Italy. I mean, just Joe just is a God over there, you know. So all that was good. And so I went over. Nancy and my wife and I went over and I had sent them 32 songs to learn. Wow. And we get there, we go to this little village man called Bodliana. You know, it's outside of a. A city called Faenza, close to Bologna.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker C: And I met him for the first time. You know, other than that, we just kind of talked on the phone, you know, broken staticy conversations on the phone. And we went to eat. First thing, course, in Italy, we ate and the whole town came out to greet us. You know, and all these musicians came. There's a lot of musicians, man. Yeah. They refer to it as Motown sometimes.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker C: Because there's just so many musicians, really great ones. And we went to the studio, which was this beautiful, like Antonio Gramantiere, who is Don Antonio, lives in the really old castle part of the city, you know, so you cross this like, moat, you know, and get over there and we rehearse. And his basement. And they knew every song. Yeah, they knew him better than I knew. Yeah. You know, And Antonio is a. An amazing guitar player. Yeah. Everybody was just top notch now. And so we rehearsed like one night, next day, next morning, at five in the morning, we all packed into a van, five burly Italians and my wife and I and all the equipment drove 10 hour drive to Hamburg for the first game.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker B: It's always good to dig yourself a deep hole. Right up, right up top.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker C: And we played 10 different countries and just played almost every night. But we didn't, you know, we just had a great response. People loved us, you know. And so we came home after that tour feeling really good about it. And then we went back about three months later and we toured southern Italy, Calabria and all that. And it was there that I started to get this idea I had to write an album about two young boys. One would be from Italy, southern Italy. The other boy would be from Mexico. So basically it was Antonio and I that I was writing.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker C: And Antonio and those guys had made that journey from Italy to Austin because they loved Jimmy Vaughn so much. And they went kind of like on this Mecca trip, you know, to find Jimmy Vaughn. And they got to meet him and they went through the United States, you know, and they. Quite an adventure. They were young kids at the time. Ah. So I thought this story would be cool, you know, and Diego would be. Be from Saltillo, where my dad was born.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker C: And. And Salvo, the Italian boy, was from Puglia. And they meet up in Galveston, Texas, where they're working in Salvo's uncle's Italian restaurant named Marios, which was an actual restaurant in Galveston. And Galveston was the largest population in Texas of Italian really, because it was a port before Houston. It was the place. It was like New Orleans. Right, right. And so they meet up there and they begin talking about. These two boys begin talking about all the things they love about America. They love American punk rock music. But then they have all the cool bands like the Count Five and the Shadows and, you know, all that stuff that I spoke of earlier.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker C: And they love the Stooges. And. And they love the films of Sam Peckinpah and they love the beat poets, Right? Yeah. And this is the America that they have dreamt up. This is America they want to find, but they find something completely different. Salvo is killed by a Border Patrol agent outside of Yuma. And eventually Diego makes it to la, where he finds his punk rock family, but has to go back because of immigration to Mexico and kind of wonders whether it was even worth it or not, you know? And, you know, it's funny because there's a line about. In one of the songs called Teenage Luggage, it's about their journey where they get picked up by Joey outside of Lubbock. Because Joe would always tell this story about how the first time he met Townes, he was driving on the outskirts of Lubbock and there's a hitchhiker with a guitar case and a knapsack. Right. And it was Townes coming back from la. Wow. And he said the towns had in the knapsack. You bunch of. A bunch of records. It was Talent's first record. He gave it to Joe. Joe immediately went to Butch and Jimmy and played it for him. That was the beginning of the Flatlanders, you know.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker C: So in this story, they got picked up by a guy named. A cowboy named Joe. You know, how to hold his heart. But there's a line in the song that says, we love the Stooges and we hate you, too. And people always assume that it's like pointing at a person saying U2, but it's actually the band U2. But, yeah, that, that. So that became that album. Then I redid it with the same tracks in Spanish called La Crusada. Yes. And then when I was going back to make this Echo Dancing record, I wanted to make a totally improvised record. And I just had snippets of lyrics and some little bit of music, but hardly anything. I started listening to that tribute record they did for me when I was ill. Yes. And one of the tracks that I loved the most was Calexico's version of Wave. Right. And they had totally everybody who did the record. Like the version of she Doesn't Live Here Anymore by Kale was one of the first songs I got back. And Ian Hunter's version of One More Time and Lenny Kay doing sack and poke. And Nick Tremulous did a beautiful version of Velvet Guitar. Lucinda did Pyramid of Tears. Steve Earle did, you know, Paradise. You know, it was.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker B: Now, that must have been. That must have been overwhelming to you at that time when you were, you know, you're down. And the whole Roots and Beyond music community worldwide comes out and goes, oh, man, we got to do something here. And the Iguanas, I remember Iguanas playing a show out at. At Slims and in San Francisco. It had, like, Dave Alvin and. Yeah, Chuck Profit was on that scene.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker C: Alex played it, too. Right.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker B: There was several of those things. Alex didn't play that night, but I'm.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker C: Sure, you know, they and Chuck put that together.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, that was. That was a great night.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker C: But, you know, it was crazy, like you say, because. Because to say it was overwhelming. It's like, you know, because death was constantly tapping me on the shoulder. And when I first heard I think she Doesn't Live Here Anymore was the first one that came from John Cale. And these are people I adored.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker C: They were my heroes. And the first two were like, Ian Hunter, Vermont.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker B: Huh?
• 1:10:07
  Speaker C: Who I'd been ripping off all those years.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker C: And Kale. Same thing. You know, I wanted strings because of Paris, 1919. Right. And, you know, I was just such an emotional wreck that, like, you know, spiritually I was depleted. Physically, I was on the verge of dying, and emotionally I was just, you know, mess, you know, and so, like, when those first two versions game, all I could do was cry like a baby, man. I mean, it was just intense. But then so many great people and they wrote so many great, you know, said so many cool things. I never stopped to think about that at all. Because we were working all the time, right? And all you care about is like, is my guitar in tune? Do I got a good string?
• 1:10:54
  Speaker B: Next thing. Yeah.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker C: Or where's the next party? Whatever, you know? But we were just traveling all the time. You don't stop and think, oh, you know, I'm this or that, you know? And I never thought that way anyway, because my brothers had always taught me that humility is vital.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker C: To be humble, you know, so that's. Maybe it's a cultural thing, I don't know. But it was just our thing, you know? And so when that happened, it was not only a great surprise, but it's really the medicine that saved me, you know? Yeah. So I'm listening to the song Wave. We're on our way to Italy, and I fell in love with the song again, thinking, wow, you know, And I started listening. She doesn't live. I listen to the whole record and I thought, I'd like to get in on this. Yeah. So when I got to the studio, we recorded in a 15th century stone mill that Antonio's family had owned for years. You know, I. I picked out, like, three or four songs for the first day, and I said, let's just redo these. And Nicola Peruk, who was a keyboard player. Do you know who Zukuro is? He's a famous Italian guy. Big. He's made records with Rick Ruby in here.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker C: All kinds of stuff. But any. Nicola plays with them. They play, like, arenas and soccer stadiums. And so. And he had played on the Crossing, okay. So he was prepared for, like, my aesthetic and stuff, you know? So, like, he would come up with loops, and then from the loops, I. I'd work on the tempo, the keys, and then it was just Antonio on guitars. Antonio can play anything. So, you know, there was, like, slide, and then I'd play a little guitar, but mostly just singing, you know, and we'd do, like three or four songs a day. You know, it just started to snowball. Yeah. And so I would go to my room that night, pick out another four songs or whatever.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker C: And we were getting three or four a day, which is pretty fast. Speedy. Yeah. And not every song worked, but the ones that did, I was really happy about, you know? And we realized by the end of it that we come up with something really special. Yes. And I love that record, man. I really do.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, me too. And you're talking about the. The Italian sense of. Of cinematic music. And again, I reviewed the record last night, you know, just let me have this fresh in my mind again. And my wife's going, wow, it reminds me of, like, David lynch soundtrack, you know? And I was like, oh, I know Alejandro's gonna like that.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, man. So that's what it was all about, you know, I love Bernard Herman and people like that, you know. So, yeah, it was all about getting that kind of vibe. And then I even reworked some lyrics, you know, and stuff. You know, I did a True Believers song. We recorded 18 songs. 14 made it to the record. But I have a version of Lazy, which was a nun song that Jennifer sang by herself. I did on the Nickel by Tom Waits. I did Alexandra Leaving by Leonard Cohen, and I did another Scarlet Butterfly by Kevin Kenney from Driving and Crying.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker B: And you have such a panoramic view.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker C: So we. So we have those four songs. And after I make this next record, which we're going to record at the end of the year with Brit Daniel from Spoon and Charlie Sex and producing with My Tree with just the trio, we're gonna make a covers where we're turning my Garage into a studio, so.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker B: Oh, cool.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker C: Yeah, we're gonna make it there at home.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker B: Now, where are you? You're not back in Austin now?
• 1:15:06
  Speaker C: No, I'm in a little town called outside of Dripping Springs. Oh. We're about 45 miles away from Austin.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker C: Close enough and far enough.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker B: It's beautiful out there, huh?
• 1:15:16
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's the hill country, right?
• 1:15:17
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker C: Really cool. We got lucky.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker B: Yeah, man, It's. It seems like every musician I know has had to move out of Austin these days and find some other for a while. You're up in Dallas. I know we. Oh, at the Belmont Iguanas. Stayed at the. For a gig. We. We hung out with you there. But it's nice to have you close back to Austin there.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. You know, Dallas was amazing because, you know, in Austin, in Texas, there's always this, like. I don't know if you have that here in Louisiana, but, you know, there was always this, like, kind of anti Dallas from Austin, you know, Houston. But, you know, people don't really understand that. Dallas and Houston were way more musical in the early days. Austin was a government town. Okay. And music really wasn't happening till, like, 51 or so. Okay. You know, but, you know, you had, you know, Blind Willie Johnson and all those guys were playing Houston and Dallas all the time.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker C: You know, and the Blues Lightning, everybody was from Houston. And then in Dallas, you had all those great guys, Blind Lemon and all those guys were playing all that stuff, you know, so. And country stuff. I mean, you know, Bob Wills and all those guys were from up there, you know, they weren't from Austin, you know, but they all played through Austin. But, you know, that was years later, you know, man.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker B: Well, Alejandro, thank you so much for taking the time. It shows you what a. What a. What a mensch you are. On the day when you have to do a show tonight, you come sit down here with me and talk for an hour.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker C: I love it. I love it. Thank you very much, man.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker B: I'll.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker C: It's always good to see you too.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker B: You too, man.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker C: I'm glad you're.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker B: You're doing well, you know. Yeah, I'm doing great. You know, you and I have always had a bit of a connection. We haven't spent a ton of time together, but anytime you would come see the Iguanas, or I'd come with the Iguanas, would come see your band, you know, you. You're always super kind to me.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker C: Oh, I love you, man. And, you know, you always had a sharp sense of style. I like that. And you're a great musician, so, yeah, it's all good.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker B: All right on, man. Thank you so much. Well, I can't wait to see the show tonight and go get some rest, get you some vegan food. Find something without crab meat in it here in New Orleans. So for Alejandro Escovedo, I am Renee Komen, signing off from inside the Feral Zone with goodbye.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker A: Everybody waves goodbye? Climb aboard the train turn and wave goodbye again? Some go north, some go south maybe east? Some left out, some are rich, some are poor but everybody's got to wait with good blood they've headed for the other side? The sun shines brighter there and everyone's got gold and hair? They went north, they went south maybe east? Some left out, some are rich, some are poor? But everybody's got to it? Cause sunset gonna find the ones that left? A boy climbs aboard the train? Never to wait by again? He went north, he went south maybe easy? Some left out, some are rich, some are poor? But everybody's got to wait don't you cry I made it to the other.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker C: Side.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker A: The sun's not brighter here.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker C: It.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker A: Only shines on gold the air all.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker B: Window.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker A: South maybe east Some left out, some are rich, poor but everybody's got to win.