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REVIEW: Escovedo captivates with autobiographical performance

By John Kenyon

For the last song of his show Thursday night at the Englert Theatre in Iowa City, Alejandro Escovedo played a song about getting older and wanting to take someone back to a special time or place from your past, even though that place – at least the way it was for you – is unattainable.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that at its best, Escovedo’s music does just that: it takes listeners to places that, if not unattainable, are at least often hard to access. In a way, it’s to a time that no longer exists, one where songs are still simply part of the oral tradition, a singer standing among peers to tell a story.

The song, like many he performed with fellow guitarist David Pulkingham Thursday night, was from a forthcoming album (Real Animal, due June 24) on which Escovedo looks at his musical past. It’s an extension of what he has done in concert for years, telling stories about his family, his early bands and his rollercoaster ride of a career.

Anyone who has seen Escovedo perform knows he can do so in any number of configurations. From a standard four-piece rock band to a string quartet to a full-on rock orchestra, he has tried it all. Thursday was the first time I had seen him in a guitar duo format. It worked well, as Pulkingham’s jaw-droppingly good guitar solos and fills nicely complemented Escovedo’s wide-open songs.

The duo started with two rockers, as if to get that element out of the way. No, they seemed to say, two acoustic guitars need not indicate some touchy-feely affair, stomping their way through “Dear Head on the Wall” and “Everybody Loves Me.” Neither is among my favorites, but stripped of anything inessential, each was transcendent. There was nowhere to hide with this set up, and Escovedo proved that his songs and performance can withstand the scrutiny.

After that opening, he talked about his upbringing, taking the crowd from his birth in San Antonio in 1951 through a move to California and his subsequent immersion in a number of musical movements, from San Francisco hippies to British glam rockers. His story was charming, self-effacing and witty. His band Rank & File, for instance, embarked on its first tour out of New York fueled with “pot, roast chicken and enough gas to get to Dayton, Ohio." The tour consisted of seven gigs in seven weeks, so there was plenty of time to get into trouble, he added.

“That’s a lot of story to put into one album,” he said after the career overview, then played a song that he said had little to do with any of that, “Always a Friend to You.” It was one of several new songs that found Escovedo and Pulkingham blending guitar notes and voices to create a simple yet effective tune.

Another new song written for friends lost along the way, “Sister Lost Soul,” had several poignant moments. “Nobody’s left unburdened, nobody’s left unscarred,” he sang. “You had to go without me.”

He promised several songs from his theater production “By the Hand of the Father,” but played only one, “Rosalie.” The work tells of his father’s journey from Mexico to the United States, and “Rosalie” starts the tale. Here, it was given an intricate guitar introduction that was itself a moving tribute.

About halfway into the show, Escovedo and Pulkingham walked to the front of the stage to perform a song without amplification. From there, they continued down into the crowd, performing from about halfway down the middle aisle. They played a gorgeous version of “I Wish I Was Your Mother” from Escovedo’s hero Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople, followed by Escovedo’s own “Five Hearts Breaking.”

The audience was reverent during these songs, hushed. At that moment, it seemed as if Escovedo had tapped into what music should be, a spiritual communion between the artist and the audience, with only the song separating – and joining – them.

It was an intimate moment in a concert full of them. Pulkingham brought an extra guitar down and handed it to a member of the audience, who held it while he played. Later, thecrowd was so quiet that Escovedo’s lightly tapping cowboy boot on the stage was a clearly audible timekeeper.

This may all sound quite heavy, but Escovedo’s songs blend trouble and light, as do his stories. After a dark song about living in New York’s fabled Chelsea Hotel during the rise and fall of the punk era – “We came to live inside the myth of everything we'd heard,” he sang – Escovedo lightened the mood with an introduction to the song “Castanets.”

He gained some notoriety a couple of years back when the New York Times reported that the song could be found on President George W. Bush’s iPod. Escovedo said he was “terrified and horrified” by that news, adding that “I lost my sense of rhythm after that.” It turns out it was a cover of his song performed by the band Los Lonely Boys, but from Escovedo’s reaction, that wasn’t enough to assuage the ill feelings. Still, he tore into the playful number to close the set.

They returned for an encore of just one song. The 12-song show was too short, but, perhaps strategically, not so long that it included any down moments.

The closing song was a fitting cap to the evening, its lyrics neatly summarizing the previous 70 minutes. As Escovedo sang about trying to take a loved one back to experience a favorite haunt, it was clear his music is really an attempt to bring the audience along on his own journey. “Live in the moment,” he sang, “But I’m caught up in the past.”