This interview originally aired on October 8, 2025.
Sex14s: Alright then. So as I said, it’s time for a little talk with Alejandro Escovedo. Here it is:
Alejandro Escovedo: Oh, health wise I’m fine. We just got off a tour, I guess it was last week and, uh, we did a tour of the Northeast, kind of went, started out in New Orleans. Then, ended up in our last show was in, Fall River, Massachusetts. It was really cool tour. It was great. You know, it was just me and, Scott Danbom on keyboards and Mark Henne on, on drums, you know.
Sex14s: That sounds really cool. Is that what’s coming to town?
Alejandro Escovedo: Yeah. That same show, that’s coming to town.
Sex14s: I don’t wanna be intrusive, but, you’ve been very candid about the fact that 23 years ago you had a health scare, because of hepatitis B and uh, you got through it and now all these years later, you’re in your seventies. And I’m wondering if you’re thinking about mortality and your legacy.
Alejandro Escovedo: Yeah. You know, to be honest, yes. Um, you know, when I became ill in…it was 2003 that my body finally just kind of had, had enough. And, uh, I kind of went into this, you know, I was bleeding internally in three different places and so like rushed to the emergency room and spent, I think it was a couple weeks in a hospital in Arizona.
I was there performing, the play musical kind of piece that we had put together called By The Hand of the Father. And, um, it was in Tempe, Arizona that… I made it through the show, but I was immediately rushed to the, emergency room and they told me that I was bleeding internally. And, you know, uh, that whole diagnosis was that, you know, I maybe had a year to live unless I got a liver transplant.
But I found other ways of healing and you know, through the beautiful support of, uh, many of the people who would come to love my music, I survived it. And here we are 22 years down the road still playing and, and still making records and yeah, enjoying life in a, in a big way.
Sex14s: You’re sort of unique in my experience, actually. I don’t know many people who got to be in a punk band when they were teenagers and then moved on to alternative band and then folky band, and then rootsy band, and then, it’s kind of, it seems like you’ve been able to express every stage of your life with a different musical project. Do you find that different collaborators bring out different parts of you?
Alejandro Escovedo: Well, that has something to do with it, definitely, but I mean, John (Cale), John’s record, Paris 1919. Yeah, was a pivotal record for me, you know, um, as a, as a music enthusiast and record collector, you know, and so that record and Street Hassle by Lou Reed were kind of the templates that, and also Ronnie Lane’s, uh, Slim Chance, you know, and so those were all incredibly important records to me. And somewhere along the line, I kind of felt like that was a direction that I wanted to pursue. And so, like, you know, I’ve had everything from…I’ve toured with two cellos of violin, viola, and two acoustic guitars to, um, you know, Stooges enfueled kind of band with Buick MacKane to, uh, trying to combine both of those elements into one sound.
You know, the beautiful part for me about music and life is that I’m always learning. I’ve never stopped closing the door on anything, feeling like I knew really anything at all. You know, I, I kind of, uh, opened my eyes and opened my mind and, hopefully, you know, something will stick that makes…just adds a little different kind of flavor to whatever it is I’m doing at the time. So, you know, right now we’re about to prepare for a new record with Britt Daniels of Spoon and Charlie Sexton producing, you know, and we’re writing songs for that. And kind of like, you know, after the last record, which was Echo Dancing, which was a complete reworking of older material with, uh, Antonio Gramentieri in Italy and, Nicola Peruch in Italy. We did it as a trio without drums and bass, you know, and we just did…it was very electronic kind of fueled, you know.
Sex14s: I don’t want to divert you too much from your story, but I did want to ask about that. What was it like for you to revisit these songs that you’d written decades ago back when you were a kid? Do you find that they’re still true? Do they still speak to you?
Alejandro Escovedo: They took on a whole new personality, and I saw them with completely different eyes, you know, different lens altogether, you know, and none of the, none of the, none of it ever became kind of, nostalgia driven, you know? It was more about like, just trying to find how do we work this into completely, like, almost like brand new songs, you know, in that I was singing them differently. I had a different approach to the vocalization of certain stories and words and phrases, you know, and I even reworked some of the words.
And I tried to cover every, you know, phase of my career pretty much. You know, I started with The Nuns. We did do a song byThe Nuns, which was actually Jennifer Miro’s song, Lazy. Which is gonna be held back for another covers record that I’m doing after this record’s done. And, and, um, yeah, we did four covers. We did, Lazy, Another Scarlet Butterfly by Kevn Kinney. Uh, we did Alexandra Leaving by Leonard Cohen. And we did On the Nickel by Tom Waits. And all those will be included in the covers record. Yeah, it was like this whole new world had opened up and it wasn’t like it was this, um, strange and different place because I’d always, you know, Brian Eno was another person who was very influential to me, you know, when I was beginning to play music, you know.
And so like all of those records were really important. Um, Suicide was another band that really influenced me. When I was…you know, I got to see them ’cause they came to the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco, you know? Early on. So yeah, they were great. And all of that stuff kind of seeped into that record.
Sex14s: As you go through your old songs, do you ever find yourself surprised by them? I don’t know how wise you were as a kid.
Alejandro Escovedo: Well, to be honest, to say I was a kid is a bit of a stretch, you know? ’cause I didn’t, I didn’t start, uh, playing guitar. The Nuns began when I was 23 or 24 years old, you know, so I was already, you know, that was the whole idea of The Nuns was making a movie about this guy who, uh, you know, felt that rock and roll truly could only be made by adolescents, you know? And so the movie was called 18 and a Half. It was a spoof on 8 1/2. And, you know, it was, it was supposed to be about the world’s worst band, you know? And so we, since we thought we looked so cool, we’d be the guys in the band, even though we had no idea what we were doing musically, you know?
That kind of started kickstarted the whole thing, you know? You know, so when I look back on it, I was much younger, you know, in that musically I was still listening to the same records. You know, I always in… in fact, now I still love to listen to the Stooges and Mott the Hoople and Bowie and T-Rex and Roxy Music. You know, those are really my favorite records, you know, amongst other things. But that’s kind of like…as a rock and roll kid. That’s, that’s what I loved.
Sex14s: You know, that’s always been something that I’ve admired about you is when you undertake a project, you seem to give it everything you’ve got. You have all the energy you can muster. And that goes for your neighborhoods and your environments. When you moved to New York, you started making a New York noise. When you moved to Austin, you made an Austin noise. Um, do you find yourself very influenced with the people around you, the people with whom you collaborate?
Alejandro Escovedo: Well, I’ve always loved the idea of collaboration, you know, and, uh, Eno was very strong in kind of like, yeah, talking about collaboration, right? So, like, I’ve always loved the idea of working with people, and I’ve been fortunate in my life that, you know, when we were in The Nuns, we almost made a record with Iggy Pop. You know, we almost made a record with James Williamson. We got to know David Rubinson. We worked at the Automat and so we met these amazing people, you know? And then moving to New York and, well, the other part of that is that when all the New York bands would come to San Francisco, most likely The Nuns would play with them. You know? So we played with the Ramones, we played with Blondie, we played with The Dictators and bands like that, you know?
So that connection was strong. So when we finally went to New York in 78. We, uh, you know, we were, we already had a lot of friends there, you know, and that led me to play with Judy Nylon, right. You know, who had played with, uh, sang with, John Cale and Brian Eno, and was very immersed in kind of the art, uh, no wave scene in New York, you know?
Music excerpt
Sex14s: There you go. That’s Part One of the interview with Alejandro Escovedo and that song we just heard is The Nuns with Lazy. So let’s keep things going with Alejandro. This is Part Two of a talk with Alejandro Escovedo on your KALX:
Alejandro Escovedo: That led me to play with Judy Nylon, right. You know, who, who had played with and sang with, uh, John Cale and Brian Eno, and was very immersed in kind of the art, no wave scene in New York. And so when I joined her band, that opened up another world entirely. That’s where I met Cale the first time. You know, the first time I played with Judy was at Max’s Kansas City. And, and the front table there was John Cale, Brian Eno, and Chris Spedding. You know, and so it was pretty heady that whole period of time.
You know, I got to meet a lot of great people. And um, you know, it just kind of went on from there. And I was lucky when I started making my solo albums, I began working with Stephen Bruton who had played with Kris Kristofferson and Bonnie Raitt. And the Highway Men did his songs. And then I went to Chris Stamey, who was in the dBs and played with Alex Chilton for years.
And so the vocabulary started to change a little bit in my music. And then I worked with John Cale, and then I worked with Tony Visconti, who had made some of my favorite records of all time. And, you know, it just kind of went on from there. Brian Deck was in a, a band called Red Red Meat, which I really dug, you know. We, he produced, uh, the Crossing and, uh, and now with Britt and Charlie, you know, who are much younger guys. But I’ve known them, you know, I used to sell, I used to work at Waterloo Records in Austin, and Britt was always one of my best customers when he was just a kid, you know? That’s, so now he’s kind of schooling me on my own sh*t you know, so it’s kind of funny.
Sex14s: You’re so eclectic and in so many ways, you’re just all over the place in a great way. Um, because everything you try, you try respectfully. And do you give it a genuine feeling? Do you ever worry that you’re obscuring your identity or, do you ever get whiplash going from one genre to another?
Alejandro Escovedo: No, not really. You don’t. To me you don’t. You don’t. Punk rock taught me something that was really important, and that was just to be as honest and truthful and as soulful as you could be with whatever it was you were doing. You know, it didn’t matter what the musical style was, but how much heart and soul you put into it, you know, and how honest you were about what you were singing about, you know?
And so that has carried through all the way, and it doesn’t matter if I’m listening to dub music or you know, oh, I don’t know, you know, anything. Vicente Fernandez, let’s say, you know what I hear and what attracts me to it is the soul and heart, which those artists put into their music, you know? So I, I think that’s the thing. That’s what, you know, people ask me, well, what’s your music like? And it’s really hard to describe because it’s been like you. All over the place. But I just say it’s because I had a vast record collection and I was fortunate that my parents had a lot of different types of music.
My brothers played a lot of great music, you know, and through my older brothers, I think I learned so much, even though they didn’t sit me down and school me about anything. But their examples were what I really wanted to strive for musically, you know.
Sex14s: I will have to ask about your family. Obviously you just alluded to them. Was there, I mean, there’s Sheila, there’s Pete. The Escovedos are like the Kennedys, you know, in terms of Latin jazz, you know. But you are, I mean, your family’s just amazing. I can’t think of any of, any of the projects that I’m aware of that I haven’t really been quite impressed. And look, I love Sheila’s recent, Latin album, for example. It’s fantastic.
Alejandro Escovedo: Oh, it’s great. Yeah, it’s great. It’s fantastic. She is amazing. She’s just amazing. You know, she’s so powerful and such a strong woman. Such a great example of what it’s like to be a, a female musician in the world, you know? And I’m very, we’re all very proud of her. And then my brother Javier had the first… you know, Bomp Records put out the Zeroes record. It was really, was the first kind of punk rock single on the West Coast, you know? And they were amazing. Um, my brother Mario had the Dragons and they were super cool.
And, you know, of course Coke was, uh, so great. And Philip, my brother Philip was the bass player with Pete and Coke and he was amazing. And my brother Bobby also played, you know, and now all these kids, I mean, Pete did a record where he invited all the Escovedos to come and play. Everybody who played, there was like 50 or 75 people there. It was insane.
Sex14s: That’s so fantastic though. Yeah. And you get, you all get on? I mean, is it like an uncomfortable family reunion where you’re afraid to talk politics?
Alejandro Escovedo: Uh, I don’t talk politics, but I think we’re all kind of like-minded in that respect. You know, there might be a few that are, but we don’t really get into that. No, it’s all about kind of just being proud of the family and proud to be alive and still doing it and kind of carrying on this, uh, Escovedo legacy of music, you know?
Musical Interlude
Sex14s: There we go. That’s Alejandro Escovedo with Too Many Tears from his most recent album, Echo Dancing. We’ve been speaking with Alejandro Escovedo. He’s actually taking the stage a week from last night at the Chapel in uh, San Francisco. 777 Valencia Street in San Francisco on Tuesday, October the fourteenth, and that’s the reason I got to speak with him. We’re going to rejoin our talk with Alejandro right now:
Sex14s: I don’t want to get political or anything, but I, I think this question is essential, so you go straight to how you’re feeling right now. The health, your health, your physical health, but also your mental health. And it goes straight to your legacy. You go all around the country, you know there’s a Paul Simon song called American Tune, and there’s a line and it says, I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered. I don’t have a friend who feels at ease. I don’t know, a dream that’s not been shattered or driven to its knees. And I heard it on the radio, I don’t know, a few days ago, and I started to cry because I, I don’t know, a soul who’s not been battered, and I don’t have a friend who feels at ease. So I’m wondering what the current climate is like for you and your family?
Alejandro Escovedo: My father was from Mexico. My father was born in South Fields, so I’m the son of an immigrant. Born in San Antonio, Texas. And my family moved to California, to Orange County, California. Right. One of the most conservative counties in all of America. Behind the orange curtain we used to say, you know, and so I grew up in an environment. I was placed in an environment that was completely different from my childhood.
My earliest childhood, right? From being born to six years old, I was in the comfort of San Antonio, Texas, which was highly populated by Mexicanos and Chicanos. So the language, the culture, it was all very comfortable, you know? And it was really beautiful ’cause we had a lot of family there. Suddenly we’re cast into this other world, you know, blonde, blue-eyed world in which we’re suddenly beaners and spics and you know, wetbacks, you know, and so you grow up in that. And, um, you know, even in school, my teachers would refuse to pronounce my name, so they labeled me Alex. And so they take away your name, they take away your food, your culture, your language, right?
And now in this era, and I’m 74 years old, I’ve lived through the sixties. We protested. We, you know, we went on marches, we, we boycotted Safeway, you know, we were with the farm workers and everything, you know. It was an era of political defiance, you know, where you had the SDS, you had the Black Panthers, you had the Brown Berets, and different groups that were really vocal and out on the streets, you know? And now. I go through this and it’s kind of unbelievable because it seems like we’ve just regressed in such an amazing kind of avalanche of bad ideas and bad vibes and bad. It’s, it’s wrong, you know? And, and for me, at a certain point, when you become an older man with children, all you want is your children to be safe, you know?
All I want is my children to have the opportunities that America claimed to have for all of us. Right? And we know that it’s not like that, but somehow you dream of a day when it will be like that, you know? And the American dream really will be for everyone, you know, and not just those who have money or selected few, whatever, you know. And so as I traveled through the country, I’ll tell you a real quick story. I know I’m talking a lot, but, um…
Sex14s: No, no worries. I love it.
Alejandro Escovedo: No, it is an interview though.
Sex14s: Yes, it is. Exactly.
Alejandro Escovedo: So my last gig, as I said, was in Fall River, Massachusetts. A lot of my show when I do it as a trio in clubs where it, uh, allows us to be able to go out into the audience and play acoustically. And so, like mariachi style, we kind of moved from parts of the room to parts of the room. I noticed there was an older Mexican woman and then at one table, then another [00:23:00] bench seat there, there was a, a Mexican younger lady with it– looked like her daughter and an Anglo, uh, guy. But as I’m telling my story about my dad crossing the borders, to find his family, she began to cry, you know?
And the more I told the story of my father and my family, she just broke down in tears, you know? And she was having a very serious emotional kind of like, uh, breakdown. And I sang these songs and afterwards she came up to me and told me that she had crossed the border by herself at 19 years old in search of her brother who was here, and the whole time she was just weeping. You know, her daughter was there who was in high school. And I just kept asking them, you know, make sure that you’re safe. You know, just be, please be safe because it’s not the same. And you know, in every kind of authoritarian, dictator-like society, you know, they always have to point out an enemy, you know, and when Trump came down that escalator and said that all Mexicans were drug dealers and rapists and just bad people, we suddenly became that enemy, you know?
And so I travel with my passport. I travel with my marriage license. I travel with my driver’s license. But even with all that identification, being born in San Antonio, Texas, being a 74-year-old man, I still know that the possibility of them sending me off if they wanted to, would be there. You know, if they find something on my computer or they find something on my phone that doesn’t agree with their party line.
These are very difficult times, you know, and man, I, you know, music for me was always kind of this unifying force, you know, the power of words and music was what was gonna change the world to be a better place. And so I still believe in that. I think that it’s important for all of us to kind of like realize that this is not the way for us to have a, a full life, you know, for us to… if, if my life ended with this being the norm, I’d be very, very, you know, disappointed, you know, just be, yeah, hurt, you know, and broken, I think because of it, you know.
Musical Interlude
Sex14s: Alejandro Escovedo with Bury Me from his, my favorite of his albums, Gravity, and, uh, it’s certainly, certainly an awfully good album. The station to which you’re tuned is KALX, Berkeley, University of California and listener supported freeform community radio. My name is Sex14s and we’re in the middle of a talk with the wonderful Alejandro Escovedo. So let’s, let’s pick it right back up:
Sex14s: So these days, do you find yourself conflicted? Do you find yourself caught between just wanting to play rock and roll and, uh, needing to identify with your people?
Alejandro Escovedo: You know, it’s funny, it works both ways because I’ve never really had a Latino audience, you know, because of the rock and roll aspect of my music, you know, and it wasn’t like I was playing Chuck Berry songs and, and you know, Fats Domino or anything like that. I was playing Stooges and the New York Dolls and you know, English, you know, rock and roll bands that I love and I’ve always sang in English. You know, it’s the language that…And it was kind of forced upon me and right when we went to school and it was the language of rock and roll, you know, so that’s what, how I spoke, and that’s still how I sing.
Um, so I’ve never really had that audience, you know, and, and when I do have that audience, they want me to sing songs in Spanish, but I don’t, you know, and, it’s weird, but when I’m in the, the districts, like you’re talking about, you know, to me what it feels like, it feels like being at a family reunion or something. You know, I’m surrounded by my family, you know, um, but I’m not so sure that I fit into their idea. I’m probably like the weird nephew or something like that.
Sex14s: Yeah, that was me too. Yeah.
Alejandro Escovedo: You know, like, why is his hair that way and why is he dressing like that, you know? And blah, blah, blah, you know? But, you know, uh, that’s all cool, you know? It’s all part of it, you know, it’s all part of being a larger family and everyone has their own voice and it’s all good, man.
Sex14s: Do you ever find yourself, like in family reunions, uh, sitting by the fire and hearing stories that inspire you, that move you to sort of side with the struggle. I remember as a child, I always heard stories about the Spanish Civil War and how noble it was. And you know, I confess, yeah, I, I wanted to be involved in something that was noble, that wasn’t just sort of greed.
Alejandro Escovedo: You know, my father used to tell me stories about the revolution. You know, he was old enough, he was born in 1907, you know, and so like, he told me stories of how, when the soldiers would come, uh, that they would hide the women and do all those kind of things, you know, in order to stay away from the army. And my dad was always, you know, he was a working man, you know.
So we grew up, we’d go on, you know, we’d get picket signs when he was on strike and, you know, little kids with picket signs and we’d do all that kind of stuff. My dad was a big union guy, you know, so like that in that aspect. That’s, that was my experience, you know, with work, the, the workers struggle, you know, was my thing, you know, with my dad, you know? And the way my dad was treated sometimes, you know, was very, very… My dad grew up in an era where they couldn’t drink at the water fountain, and they had to sit on the buses and they couldn’t eat in certain restaurants, you know? So I, and it was funny because my dad really wanted us to, uh, be part of American culture. You know, he really, really wanted that, you know? As did my mother.
Sex14s: It’s fascinating to me because they just say these awful things without concealing them, without fear of contradiction.
Alejandro Escovedo: Oh yeah. It’s very cruel. Exactly. It’s a lot of cruelty, man.
Sex14s: Oh yeah. It goes well beyond a political disagreement. I’ll never forget how people treated my mom. They talked to her like she was stupid.
Alejandro Escovedo: I feel the same way about my parents. You know, they were treated as if they weren’t as good sometimes, you know? And they were wonderful, wonderful people. My mom was very smart, brilliant woman. And my dad was too, you know? So it’s just, I don’t know. I don’t know. We change it, you know? How do you change people’s perspective when you have… so the supposed head of our country leading them in the direction of cruelty and you know, hatred, you know?
Sex14s: Yeah. Do you have lots of family reunions and such? How do you stay in touch?
Alejandro Escovedo: There was just a family reunion, which I wasn’t able to make, but yeah, they just had a big one in, in the Bay Area. Um, but what at…when my father and mother were alive, we always had a, a reunion every year. They’d have it down in Baja California, you know, so we’d go down there, Rosarita Beach and have…everybody came from north and south. It was, it was great, man. Just a lot of fun, a lot of characters, and you know, a lot of laughing and a lot of, you know, family stuff, you know?
Sex14s: Yeah, yeah. Sounds beautiful.
Alejandro Escovedo: Yeah. Yeah, it was great.
Sex14s: Okay, well, we’re just about out of time, so I always ask this question: When people come to your show next Tuesday. What can they expect?
Alejandro Escovedo: Well, it’s, it’s a good variation of, of stuff from throughout my career. You know, we kind of began early on and then kind of work our way towards the Echo Dancing stuff. It’s a good rock and roll show. It’s a trio with drums, keyboards, electronic keyboards, uh, Scott Danbom, he’s a keyboard player. He was in a band called Centro-Matic, which were wonderful, out of Texas. And then Mark Henne played with Black Joe Lewis for a while. And, uh, he’s our drummer. He is a killer drummer. And it’s me on guitar, you know, and so there’s everything from acoustic ballads to straight out noise. Uh, fun Stooges inspired rock and roll.
Sex14s: There you go. It has been such a pleasure to speak with you, Alejandro.
Alejandro Escovedo: You’re the best for me as well. For me as well. Thank you.
Sex14s: Well, thank you so much. Okay. Take care and I’ll see you at the show.
Alejandro Escovedo: Great. I’ll see you there.
Musical Interlude
Sex14s: You can definitely hear the Eno influence there. That’s Alejandro Escovedo from the album Gravity and the original studio recording of Bury Me and we heard the redone version of it before the last portion of the interview. And that is IT for our talk with Alejandro Escovedo and I wanna thank him and Echoplex and everyone who helped make it happen. It’s really remarkable to be able to speak with an artist of his caliber.
