Alejandro Escovedo's hard road

The Austin songwriter talks about his journey to recovery and the album that resulted

By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, May 01, 2006

Everyone who sees Alejandro Escovedo is compelled to say how good he looks.

That's what happens when you collapse in a bathroom from an aggravated case of hepatitis C — a potentially fatal liver ailment — and manage not to be the late Alejandro Escovedo.

When you write off a year going through the rigors of treatment, slowly get yourself back together and make one of the most focused albums of your career, "The Boxing Mirror," which arrives in stores today.

That's part of what people say when they tell Escovedo he looks good: Congratulations on not dying.

Because here's the funny thing: Escovedo has always looked good, looked (and acted, he'll admit) far younger than whatever age he was at the time.

As he orders lunch at the Cypress Cafe in Wimberley, a few minutes from his home, you wouldn't in a million years think he's 55 years old, that he's logged 30 grinding years in the rock 'n' roll biz.

That he's gone though brilliant highs with his bands the Nuns, Rank and File, the almighty True Believers, and 14 years as a solo artist. Gone through hideous lows (the suicide of his second wife Bobbie LeVie in 1991, along with serious drinking and an increasingly rebellious liver) and come out the back eating lunch like a regular guy.

Or maybe that's just the way to act when you beat death by a whisker: Act like it's a regular part of life.

Which it is.

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Escovedo's serious health problems, and the story of "Boxing Mirror," began in 2003 in Tempe. (A tune called "Arizona," with atmospheric strings and dark narrative, is the album's lead-off track.)

He became violently ill before a performance of "By The Hand of the Father," the theater piece he'd been performing since 2000. He thought it might be bad flu. Then he started vomiting up lakes of blood.

Escovedo's liver — wracked with the hepatitis C virus he knew about but chose to ignore — was on the verge of total collapse. And like a lot of working musicians, he didn't have health insurance.

"I wasn't doing the right things; I'll be the first to admit that," Escovedo says, poking at his food. "I kept drinking, which I no longer do, and I kept working like a maniac."

The standard treatment for hepatitis C involves regular doses of interferon, a cure that can feel as bad as the disease, sometimes involving extreme weakness and severe flulike symptoms, all of which Escovedo experienced.

"You're supposed to be on the stuff for a year, year and a half," he says. "I lasted about six months, eight months. Some people get to work and function when they take it. I wasn't one of those people."

These days, he's happy pursuing alternative therapies, including Tibetan medicine, acupuncture and massage.

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Slowly, very slowly, Escovedo crept back into the Austin scene. A gig at South by Southwest here, a small show there.

He was still shaky on Nov. 4, 2004, when he headlined an epic concert at the Paramount celebrating the release of "Por Vida," an Escovedo tribute album designed to defray some of his staggering medical costs. Everyone from Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye to Los Lonely Boys and John Cale appeared, and it was exhausting night.

Escovedo puts his fork down, grows a little quiet recalling that show. "It was a long night," he says. "The work that (house band leader) Charlie (Sexton) put into it was just phenomenal. I've never really been able to thank him."

Escovedo wrote songs about his illness, both in his own words and those of his wife, Kim Christoff, whose poems he has used as the basis for lyrics. "I go through her notebooks and if I see something to latch on to, I'll try to edit them in a way that's singable," he says. Ultimately, Christoff contributed to the most experimental tunes, including the dramatic "Dearhead on the Wall," "Notes on Air" and the moving title track.

By December 2005, he felt healthy enough to head into a Los Angeles studio with the legendary Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale. Escovedo has known Cale since 1978, when they were both hanging out in the Chelsea Hotel in New York after Escovedo left his punk band the Nuns. Cale has produced albums by such Escovedo heroes as the Stooges and Patti Smith.

"The production process with Cale is almost backwards," he says. "The first thing we did was spend two weeks sitting across from each other, I with a guitar and a microphone, he at the keyboard. We'd both play, get a performance and build on that, instead of the usual way people make records, which is rhythm section first, then everything else. It means each songs ends up centered around the guitar, piano and voice."

"The Boxing Mirror" is a typically eclectic Escovedo affair, with gauzy drama (the grim "Died a Little Today") and songs about family ("The Ladder," "Evita's Lullaby," dedicated to his mother). But it's the rockers, such as the thrashing "Sacramento and Polk," that feel like a new lease on life.

One member of the "Boxing Mirror" studio band's style made the grungier songs possible: guitarist Jon Dee Graham, with whom Escovedo played for five tumultuous years in the True Believers.

After that band disintegrated, Graham decamped to Los Angeles and Escovedo began a solo career. When Graham returned to Austin in 1995, some saw a rivalry in the offing.

"I can only speak for me, but we were roommates in the Believers and spent years literally next to each other," Escovedo says. "He knows where the bodies are buried and vice versa, all the excess that comes with rock 'n' roll, the highs of being on a major (label), everybody telling you you're the bomb, and the lows of getting dropped. It was devastating when the Believers broke up.

"When he came back," he continues, "I think a lot of tension stemmed from the fact that Jon wasn't drinking and I was. He was trying to be clean and clear and I was trying to be as confused and (messed) up as possible. I had a lot to try and numb."

Interestingly, Graham sees it pretty much the same way. "Five years in a band like the Believers, it's like dog years or something," he says. "We really needed that seven-year cooling-off period. It's just common sense, I think."

But Graham adds he had a blast making "Boxing," which is full of his signature guitar buzz. "I think Al was comfortable having me there," Graham said of "Boxing." "I'm a known quantity and the chemistry is still there between us. I think he wanted me to be on the record because he knew I could deliver the mail."

Escovedo goes a bit further. "There are lots of brilliant guitar players, but I swear to God, there are very few guitarists who can rock a song like '1969' (by the Stooges) the way that song is meant to rock. Songwriters can talk about how they're gonna make a rock 'n' roll album, but I think it's bull. They just don't have the touch. Jon Dee does, and together, we can make an awful noise."

With his own album, "Full," to promote, as well as his always-popular Wednesday night gigs at Continental Club, Graham is not a part of Escovedo's ongoing live lineup.

"I'm just glad he part of the album," Escovedo says. "Nobody sounds like him."

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So now comes the hard part: touring, an activity that can utterly exhaust musicians half his age (and with far healthier livers).

"This is going to be the first real test of what my stamina is truly like," he says. There's a show in Chicago, then a date in Ireland, press in London, an American jaunt, then two more weeks in Europe.

"I did 30 years of six-weeks-on touring," Escovedo says. "I can't do that anymore. I think I enjoy it more than I ever have, and this band is capable of creating this really beautiful thing, but . . ."

Three years ago, it didn't look like he'd ever play anything again, didn't look like he'd be here at all. Now it's one thing at a time, instead of everything all at once.

"For me to go back to where I was, as far as illness is concerned," he says, "is not something I want to experience."

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926