As a recording artist, if you hang around long enough, you get to look back at your body of work.
And if you’re really lucky, you not only get to revisit your canon but get a shot at reinterpreting and reimagining the fruits of your earlier labor.
That’s what Austin’s Alejandro Escovedo has done with his latest album Echo Dancing. It finds the singer-songwriter, scheduled to play San Antonio’s Stable Hall on Friday, June 12, using the past to shape the future.
The idea was spawned in part when the 75-year-old Americana icon took a listen to Por Vida: A Tribute to Alejandro Escovedo, a 32-cut compilation featuring a wide array of artists covering the songs of the album’s namesake. It was released to help him cover medical bills incurred while he was recovering from hepatitis C.
Among the friends and famous fans who participated were Lucinda Williams, Rosie Flores, Son Volt, the Cowboy Junkies, the Jayhawks and Ian Hunter. One cover in particular caught Escovedo’s ear.
“I came across a song done by Calexico, called ‘Wave,’” Escovedo said. “I just loved it. I started listening to that record a little more, and I thought it would be cool to join the excavation of songs, see what’s down there and see what we could salvage and put a new paint job on. Maybe just fix it up and see what happens. I had a lot of fun doing it. It was really interesting how it came about. It just happened by chance, but once it started to roll, it was really, really easy and a lot of fun to do.”
As the next step, Escovedo decamped to the Italian countryside, where he joined forces with musicians Don Antonio and Nicola Peruch. Escovedo had worked with Antonio on 2018’s The Crossing, a concept album about two young refugees — one Italian, one Mexican — who bond over their mutual love of punk rock while they struggle with racism and discrimination as they try to immigrate to America.
Escovedo gladly leaned into this musical partnership as he spent November 2022 in Europe working on Echo Dancing at the duo’s recording studio. The facility is located inside a 15th-century stone mill overlooking vineyards and olive orchards.
“Don Antonio and Nicola Peruch were the perfect partners in this endeavor, because they were just very open to whatever I was going to do, no matter what,” Escovedo said. “The idea was that we were going to create an album that was totally improvisational — just start playing, start singing and see what happens. Then we changed gears and got into this mode and it worked out OK. They were perfect for the job. It’s amazing.”
He added: “Antonio and I wrote The Crossing together and worked on The Crossing together with that band — his band. I was accustomed to working with them, and they were accustomed to working with me, so it worked out.”
In hopping on his musical time machine, Escovedo not only went through his solo canon, but included selections from other groups and projects he was involved with, specifically Buick MacKane (“John Conquest”) and the True Believers (“Outside Your Door”).
But rather than do a by-the-numbers rendition, Escovedo and his cohorts reimagined the original material using sonics and electronics in a manner that was a tip of the cap to influences such as pioneering electro-punk duo Suicide.
Echo Dancing also arrives at a time when Escovedo is taking stock of his life and mortality. Part of it involves a recent move back to Austin after spending four years living in the Belmont Hotel in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas.
“I spent most of my life in hotels and wanted to get back to the country,” he explained.
Escovedo’s oldest brother, Manuel, died the day before our interview. The passing left him in an understandably introspective mood, and Escovedo revealed he’s also working on a memoir that he hopes to use as source material for a one-man show within the year.
“Manuel was a good man in his 90s, and he was just a great older brother,” Escovedo said. “It’s funny with family. I come from a very large family — 13 kids. As they all began to leave us, part of you leaves with them. Second in line is Pete [Editor’s Note: He happens to be Sheila E’s dad], and he’s in his 80s. He’s still playing, and he’s still a beautiful man and so inspirational. Then I’m next in line after Pete.
“It’s weird, you know. You’re queueing up for this role. I don’t know, it’s strange. Thankfully, the beauty of the sexuality and sensuality of rock ’n’ roll [continues to inspire me] — the kind of outlaw rebel nature of rock ’n’ roll, when it was true to its form and the willingness to kind of just be who you are.”
$37, 8 p.m. Friday, June 12, Stable Hall, 307 Pearl Parkway, stablehall.com.
Sign Up for SA Current newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
