In the Deep End With … Alejandro Escovedo

A funny thing happened on Alejandro Escovedo’s way to the studio.

As he was en route to Italy to record an album of new songs formed largely through improvisation, he listened back to Por Vida, a 2003 tribute album made by friends and admirers to provide financial support and uplift when he was very ill with hepatitis C. He was struck by how other artists had found new sounds and nuances in his songs, and thought he might be able to do the same himself.

By the time he arrived at Waveroof Studio in Castel Bolognese, Italy, he was ready to build something new using his existing songs as a foundation, with help from co-producers Don Antonio and Nicola Peruch. The result was Echo Dancing, a gallery of 14 of Escovedo’s songs painted with a fresh palette, released March 29 on Yep Roc Records.

Here “Castanets,” perhaps his best-known song, trades its fast-paced snap for a slinkier cumbia setting, with the title shifted to “Castañuelas.” “Everybody Loves Me” gains a bit of electronic jitter and distortion in the pitch, making it feel like a cowboy song sent from the future. “Bury Me” sheds its meditative groove to try on a more percussive treatment. The songs tap into Escovedo’s three-decade solo catalog as well as output from his early bands The True Believers and Buick MacKane.

All through his career, Escovedo has defied genre boundaries and moved purely in response to his hunger for new sounds and new ways to express himself through music. Echo Dancing is both a new approach and a continuation.

As he drove through the Deep South on tour last week, Escovedo spoke by phone about Echo Dancing, reconstructing his songs, music criticism, memoir, and much more for No Depression’s “In the Deep End” series. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What made you want to revisit these songs?

Originally I was going to do an album, but it was going to be an improvised record, and I knew what the instrumentation was that I wanted. I knew I needed [Don] Antonio on guitars and bass and mellotron and Nicola [Peruch] on all his keyboards and stuff. And I figured we could make a really cool record that way.

And then as I was traveling to Italy, I started to listen to this record called Por Vida, which was a tribute record they did when I was ill with hep C in 2003. And it was then that I listened to a track by Calexico. They did this gorgeous job of “Wave.” And then I started listening to more of that record where people interpreted my songs, and there were just some cool variations and unexpected twists and turns that other people had found in my songs. And I thought, I’m going to join in and excavate these older songs and let’s see what we can find.

How did you choose which songs to go back to?

It is funny because some of it was just accident. I’d listen to a bunch of songs and one would pop out, and then some of them didn’t work. I wanted to do “Five Hearts Breaking” off of Gravity, and it just didn’t fit the style that we were doing. We couldn’t find it. So we discarded that one and then just moved on. But it was all a matter of me just listening, finding songs that I felt like maybe had been underappreciated or overlooked.

As you reimagined these songs, did you have any sort of guideposts or anything in particular that you were going for?

It was individual to every song, but there were songs like the version of “Castanets” that we do, it’s called “Castañuelas” now — over COVID I had gotten really interested in listening to music from Latin America and such, especially Mexico. And I came upon this movie called Ya No Estoy Aquí, which translates to “I’m No Longer Here.” It’s a movie about these kids that live in kind of the projects of Monterrey, they love cumbia, and they have Bowie-like haircuts and different colored hair and cool clothing. And they have this whole cult and culture around this slowed-down cumbia. They do these really cool dances and stuff. I just love that style. It was slowed down, it was really cool. And I just started playing that little riff that you hear at the beginning [of “Castañuelas”], and it had this slightly cumbia feel. We also threw a little dub reggae in there, so it’s a hybrid of styles, it’s not a pure cumbia by any stretch, but I just had fun playing it. I was kind of improvising lyrics, and I changed some a little bit, used some of the old lyrics and created some new ones. It was just a lot of fun to do. So that one was really cool because it really departed from the original.

As a fan, I felt a little nervous when I heard about a new version of “Castanets,” and I had to work with myself a little to get over that preciousness and enjoy “Castañuelas” on its own merits. Did you have to push past anything like that? Did it take some courage to mess with these songs?

I think we were really prepared to really just let go of the past and create something new and embrace it. So every day we were only listening to the song for the structure and sometimes the tempo. But other than that, we weren’t really concerned with the past version. It never occurred to us to, that just never came up. It was a lot easier in that way because we were just open to whatever was coming through the speakers at the time.

“John Conquest” is a song from your Buick MacKane days in 1980s Austin, and fires back at a local music critic who wasn’t exactly a fan of the band. What is your relationship with music critics in general? Do you think they help or hurt what musicians are trying to do?

When I began listening to music and really developing a sense of what rock and roll was, I just couldn’t get enough of records and all the great magazines. There was a guy on Main Street in Huntington Beach, he had a little store by the pier, and this guy took a liking to me. So he would always order all the English press, so I would get NME, Sounds, Melody Maker, Trouser Press, and Rolling Stone. And they all had great writers as reviewers, Richard Meltzer and Lester Bangs, of course, John Mendelsohn, Jon Landau, Dave Marsh, Chet Flippo, Joe Nick Patoski, all these greats. So I had a really broad sense of what rock and roll was doing not just in America, but in England and Europe too. And I love the writers because they were my encyclopedia. They were my sources of information. So as I started to play and get reviews of different stages of my career and stuff, I’ve always had a great relationship with writers. And quite honestly, because I never was a chart-selling artist, I’ve never sold a whole lot of records, the critics were the ones who were kind of championing my cause or whatever, my music. So I’ve always had a valuable relationship, and I get on with them because I think we all have the same love for music and want to spread the news, basically.

I read somewhere a year or two ago that you were working on a memoir. How is that going, and what that process is like for you?

Working on a memoir still. There’s a lot of information to kind of sift through. My writing partner is John Phillip Santos, he’s a professor at University of Texas at San Antonio and a beautiful writer. He’s written two novels himself. We just had a week in Santa Fe where we got some really good stuff, and we’re about to do another week of writing when I get back off this tour. And it’s going really well. And we’re almost at that point to where we feel like it’s done.

Simultaneously, I’m working with a theater group in Calgary called One Yellow Rabbit on a one-man performance of the memoir. So that’ll be something.

Your career has really crossed genres; you’ve never put out music that has been easy to shove into a box. Does that make life harder for you as a musician, or easier?

It makes it easier as a musician, because like I was telling you about creating Echo Dancing, we were completely open to everything. And I’ve always said, you’re very fortunate if you can create your own voice. And obviously, those of us who were not the originators of rock and roll or whatever have been choosing bits and pieces from here and there. And as we listen to David Bowie or Roxy Music or bands like that, that really kind of have this broad canvas of colors and sounds and ways to express words, I’ve really tried to follow in those footsteps.

When we were forming Rank and File, let’s say, we loved Waylon Jennings, but we also loved dub music and tried to marry those two things with the experience we had from being in punk rock bands, the energy. But then when Chip [Kinman] and I were forming the band, we’d listen to Jorge Ben, the Brazilian songwriter, Stan Getz and Tapper Zukie and Muddy Waters, and the list just goes on and on. We wouldn’t stop listening. So that’s what it’s all about. And I think that as a musician, that’s a beautiful place to be. And if somewhere in there you’ve carved out your own place, you’re even more fortunate. Because I’ve always felt like if you had your own voice, no one could ever really slag you about it, because it’s just what you do. It’s your thing. And maybe they don’t like it or whatnot, but they can’t criticize it.

Commercially, it’s probably not the wisest thing to do. When my first solo record came out, Gravity, it was never in the rock and roll section in record stores. It was always in Mexican music, Latin music, salsa, third world, world beat, on and on and on, all based on my name. So that’s fucked up. [John Kunz, owner of Austin’s Waterloo Records store and the Watermelon Records label, which put out Gravity] had to call record stores all over the country, just trying to set ’em right on my music. Then when I was on Rykodisc, when they were trying to get my music on radio, the program directors would say things like, “We can’t pronounce his name. How do you expect us to play his music?” “We already have one Mexican band, we don’t need another one.”

It’s a strange thing. I don’t know what to say about it, because I never changed my name. I never wanted to. Maybe life would’ve been easier had I changed my name, but I was very proud of my name and love my name.