'I'm still out here somewhere'
Alejandro Escovedo subverts expectations, Richard and Linda Thompson look back, and Johnny Cash's vaults yield one last (?) surprise.
Sitting in the audience as Alejandro Escovedo began his concert here at the Englert Theatre on Tuesday night, I thought about the video I had seen earlier that day of the opening night of the latest Rolling Stones tour. The band, led by the surprisingly spry but still slower Mick Jagger and Keith Richards — The Dimmer Twins, if you will — sounded OK, but they had definitely lost, if not a full step, certainly half of one. I've never seen the Stones live and at this point I’m sure I never will. I can't imagine paying $134 (the cheapest seat at this summer's Soldier Field stop) to see a shadow of something that had been great. To those who do, more power to you and I hope it's a gas, gas, gas. But for me, my time and money are better spent with an artist like Escovedo.
Just seven years younger than Jagger and Richards, he seems an entire generation or more removed. With a career that spans more than 40 years and several band in addition to his stellar solo work, Escovedo is now doing the same thing as the Stones, touring a show that leans heavily on his back catalog. But unlike the Stones, who attempt to recreate the past, Escovedo is using that source material to recreate. His latest album, Echo Dancing, finds him reworking 14 songs from throughout his solo career. In each case, the result is more challenging, deeper. He is exploring existing the rhythms and melodies, turning them inside out, breaking them and remaking the parts to create something new.
A small crowd witnessed the show, a return just 10 months after his last stop for a free show at the Iowa Arts Festival last June. That was his first visit in 11 years, so I was not going to miss this despite having seen him so recently. As I wrote in a preview of that show, I've seen him more than a dozen times over the years, and each show has featured a different configuration. This time, he added James Mastro's guitar to the keyboard and drums he brought along last summer, adding depth and texture to what had been a spare sound.
He played the first four songs from the new LP in order, tunes well known to anyone who has followed Escovedo over the years, but in arrangements that were not. This was more Dylan than Stones, some in the audience clearly not recognizing the tunes until he reached the chorus. None of these new arrangements will supplant the old, but they offer new ways to listen to songs that have become familiar, that have perhaps lost a bit of their punch over time. The clattering pulse of "Bury Me," for example, gives it a more defiant tone. When Escovedo first sang, "If I should die before I turn 43, bury me beneath the justice tree," he was already 41. Now, after three-plus decades of close calls and health scares, he's justified in singing it not with wary trepidation but with defiant force.
Given the nature of the set, it's no surprise he revisited songs from albums from throughout his career. He hit highlights from earlier LPs Gravity and A Man Under the Influence, as well as a handful from the trio of albums he made in the 2000s with producer Tony Visconti.
Escovedo is also a storyteller, often peppering his shows with lengthy tales that add context to his songs. On this night, he talked about his long history of playing in Iowa City, including his earliest show at Gabe's as a member of the short-lived cowpunk band Rank & File: "Gabe's has the worst load-in in America," he said of the steep metal stairs that have been the bane of many an amplifier-lugging musician.
In that vein, he talked about his earliest days playing in punk bands like the Nuns, persevering despite the struggles because he and others just loved playing music. That led into "Sensitive Boys," a slightly overproduced ballad from his 2008 album, Real Animal. Here, the lean arrangement was driven by a beautifully played piano melody from Scott Danborn while Mastro added heavily treated guitar that sounded like strings. It was a beautiful bed over which Escovedo belted out "The road to nowhere, they'll rub it back in our face. But I'm still out here somewhere and no one can take your place."
As he has done at nearly every show I've seen over the years, he brought the band out into the audience for a short acoustic set. Walking halfway up the aisle of the Englert's main floor, the quartet played "Something Blue" from 2018's The Crossing. Danborn moved to violin, while drummer Mark Henne added tambourine. An audience member then requested "San Antonio Rain," a soaring ballad I had previously not really noticed from 2012's Big Station, and he asked her to join in on the backing vocals. It was a wonderful goosebump moment. That was followed by a hushed take on Mott the Hoople's "I Wish I Your Mother," a song Escovedo has been covering for decades. No matter how many times I hear it, when the instruments are silenced and Escovedo and his band sing the final chorus in harmony, it always moves me.
They returned to the stage for a strong set that included a moving version of the Faces' "Debris." Escovedo told of playing in the band of the song's author, Ronnie Lane, after Lane had moved to Austin for the last decade of his life. He said Lane would hand him a bottle of brandy and tell him he needed a little personality. One night, Escovedo had a bit too much personality, and said he was probably the only person to be kicked out of a Faces-adjacent band for drinking too much.
"Sally Was a Cop," a moody track from Real Animal, played with an edgier approach on Echo Dancing, brought things to a high point as Escovedo wound down the set. He closed with "Castanets," one of his two or three most well-known songs. But as fit the rest of the night, he started with the version from Echo Dancing, here renamed "Castañuelas," a druggy "reggae dub/cumbia" take on the song. It was a last subversion of the norm for Escovedo.
That was immediately followed by Escovedo's own "Start Me Up" moment, a not-dissimilar riffy version of "Castanets" that brought the crowd to its feet to join him in singing "I like her better when she walks away." No step was lost here, however, as the band roared through the tune. A night full of such nods to the audience would have been fine, but Escovedo offered something more, sidestepping nostalgia by giving us a new way to listen.
Sticking with the theme of seventy-somethings taking a look back while also offering something new, the 50th anniversary of I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight from Richard and Linda Thompson is being rightfully celebrated. Of particular note is the latest episode of the brilliant podcast, “Life of the Record.” There, producer Dan Nordheim hears from Richard and Linda about the making of the album. Linda, who has suffered from vocal dysphonia for years, appears by proxy through their daughter, Kami. It is an enlightening hour-plus that delves into the writing and recording of the album, the tension between Richard and Linda (who eventually divorced), and the indifference of the marketplace to what is now considered a seminal ’70s masterpiece.
Thompson has a new solo album, Ship to Shore, coming out on May 31.
Lastly, there is a new Johnny Cash album coming.
Songwriter will feature 11 songs recorded in 1993, a year before Cash connected with Rick Rubin for American Recordings and everything that came after. It’s an interesting look at that pre-Rubin era. I hadn’t paid attention to Cash’s new albums for many years before Rubin came along. Going back now, I hear 1989’s Boom Chicka Boom and 1991’s Mystery of Life as the then-latest attempts update Cash’s sound. They are dated despite the charm and gravitas of Cash shining through on every track. That’s why Rubin’s stark presentation was so startling, so elemental.
With the forthcoming Songwriter, we hear something surely destined at the time for a fate similar to his recent work. Instead, three decades later, everything but Cash’s guitar and vocal were stripped from the recordings and augmented by new support from kindred spirits like Marty Stuart. The first track, “Well Alright,” sounds as if it could have been pulled from one of Cash’s ‘70s albums, a jaunty toe-tapper delivered with a sly grin. Any Cash is welcome, but this in particular feels like an interesting alternate history. What if Cash had continued along the same path but with people who had stopped trying to get him onto country radio? I look forward to hearing the rest when it is released in June.