Alejandro Escovedo -- A Living Legend May Finally Get His Due

When influential alt-country magazine No Depression (RIP) overlooked Wilco, Emmylou Harris, and many other deserving and better know acts to name Alejandro Escovedo “Artist of the Decade,” the magazine’s co-founder Grant Alden explained that Escovedo was just one of those artists you went to the mat for. People like to pull for Alejandro Escovedo. When he was diagnosed with potentially life-threatening Hepatitis C a few years ago, fans and fellow-musicians banded together to raise money for his health expenses. Alejandro is not just a musician, he’s a cause.

Despite piles of critical accolades, more than a decade on everyone’s “best band you’re not listening to” list, and even a spot on President Bush’s I-Pod, Alejandro’s fans have yet to enjoy the vindication of seeing the 57-year old Austin roots rock icon achieve widespread fame. But, with a Today show appearance scheduled tomorrow to celebrate the release of an excellent new album and a summer tour opening for the Dave Matthews Band, his fans may finally get their wish.

Alejandro’s newest album, Real Animal is among the finest in a catalogue of very fine albums. Real Animal, which is available in stores tomorrow, sounds in many ways like a career retrospective rather than a new evolution.

Real Animal reflects the variety of Alejandro’s musical experience (he fronted a punk band called the Nuns early in his career). The album-opener “Always a Friend,” is a foot-stomping post-punk anthem while “Sister Lost Soul” reflects more closely the alt-country aesthetic for which he is best known.

In his live show, Alejandro combines plaintive ballads, foot-stomping country in the key of Texas, and straightforward rock with a real talent for storytelling. Between songs and in them, Alejandro enthralls with sometimes touching, often funny, and always honest yarns of his life and the people in it.

Escovedo possesses a remarkable ability to say so much using the simple tools of song. The ballad “I Was Drunk,” from the 1999 album Bourbonitis Blues, was inspired by the exploits of a friend notorious for getting sloshed and kicked out of bars. As he was pitched out onto the sidewalk, the friend would call out the name of his patient and understanding wife. From these unlikely ingredients, Escovedo creates an intensely soulful love song that crashes with the cacophony of drunken confusion as he sings “I was drunk,” then resolves melodically as he sings “I called out your name.” In that transition, the heart and essence of a human connection is captured in a most unexpected and moving way.

Alejandro Escovedo’s songs tell the stories of the beauty, weirdness and heartbreak of life with an honesty and humility that makes him not only one of the best musicians you’re not listening to, but one of the greatest national treasures you haven’t heard of.

LIVE: The Today Show (Tue Jun 24)
LIVE: Sat Jul 12 @ 9:30 Club ($20)
ALBUM: Real Animal (out Jun 24)

http://www.alejandroescovedo.com/
http://www.myspace.com/alejandroescovedo

REVIEW -- Wilco at the 9:30 Club (Feb. 27, 2008)

In interviews, Wilco’s front-man Jeff Tweedy bristles when journalists refer to his band and their music as “experimental.” “I don't feel like we've ever been very experimental to begin with,” Tweedy told Pitchfork Media in an interview last May. “As far as I'm concerned, we've always been a rock band.”

As if to prove the point, conspicuously absent from Wilco’s performance at the 9:30 Club Wednesday night were the digital bleeps and whirs of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot -- the album that typified Wilco as experimenters. In their place were an electric piano that would sound at home in a 1970s-era classic-rock band and a decidedly analog three-piece horn section. Even the staging was stripped down, as if to say we are a simple Midwestern rock band, nothing more. Gone is the giant video screen displaying abstract images seen on the Ghost is Born tour. Wednesday night’s stage was set with just guitars, amps, a big oriental rug splayed on the floor, and a large cowboy hat atop Tweedy’s head.

Setting the tone of the night as an intimate back-to-basics showcase of Wilco’s songwriting and talent as a rock and roll band, Tweedy opened with a plaintive arrangement of “Sunken Treasure” constructed only of finger-picked acoustic guitar, drums and lap steel sprinkled softly. With Tweedy’s vocals at the center of it all, the sparseness and quiet of the arrangement put the full power of his songwriting on display.

The crowd seemed pleased, showing their enthusiasm at the smallest of promptings. Not far into the show, as Tweedy began the first instrumental break of “She’s a Jar,” he realizes his harmonica is in the wrong key. As he continues playing, each step in his subsequent effort to procure a new harmonica draws enthusiastic applause from the crowd culminating in raucous cheering as he blows the first correct note with the new harmonica.

As the band progressed through the set list, they increasingly let their rock and roll side hang out culminating with a loud and thrilling double-encore featuring older fan-favorites such as “Casino Queen.”

Many who became fans of Wilco during the Yankee Hotel era may complain about the band’s pendulum swing back towards a more straight-forward alt-country style. But, this is a band that has never allowed its fans to stay too long in a sonic comfort zone. “I think there's a difference between confirming an audience and challenging an audience,” Tweedy told Rolling Stone in 2004, “and if you decide to challenge an audience I don't think half-measures will do you any good.” There, he was discussing the band’s shift to the more avant-garde electronic sounds of Yankee Hotel and A Ghost is Born. But, the same idea applies to their present return to a rootsier rock and roll sound. Wednesday’s show proved that even at their simplest, Wilco is among America’s most innovative and interesting rock and roll bands.