Four years may have passed since the Chronicle last checked in on Paloma's musician father at any length, but it's hard to believe those four years of Escovedo's life were spent "lying around." He was busy then, clerking at Waterloo Records' vinyl shop and raising a family of three, trying to find time to fit in the release of his first solo record, Gravity (on local indie Watermelon records), as well as taking his first stabs at touring since the breakup of the True Believers. Between that article and this one, Escovedo has, in no particular order: A) added a fourth member to his brood, young son Paris; B) released two more albums on Watermelon, Thirteen Years, and an EP; C) given up the Waterloo job to play a seemingly endless series of road dates; D) married longtime companion Dana Smith, guitarist for local garage- pop sweethearts Pork; E) played a few triumphant reunion dates with the band some will always see as the apex of his 20-year career, the True Believers; and F) signed with Rykodisc, who've just released what might be Escovedo's most fully realized work to date, With These Hands. A CD from Al's noisesome beer monster outfit, Buick MacKane, should follow before the end of the year. Not to accuse Paloma Escovedo of dishonesty, but if (as she claims) Papa Al does nothing but lie around, when does he find the time?!!
Certainly, there is no lying-around time available the day set aside for this interview. Workmen are busily converting the garage of the Escovedos' South Austin residence into a combination demo studio and "love shack" for Smith's bandmate, Mary Hatman. Meanwhile, Pretty Mouth frontman Buff Parrot is straightening out a plumbing problem at the house where, 15 minutes after I arrive, Escovedo and Smith breeze in from taking Paris to the doctor. An hour and a half later, after discovering to my embarrassment that a great interview has been lost to a dysfunctional tape recorder (well, more like a dysfunctional interviewer: It helps to put the machine on "record"), we break to pick up Escovedo's 13- year- old daughter Maya from school and take her and Paloma to another doctor's appointment. From there, an unlimited supply of visiting neighbors and phone calls ensure it will be at least another hour before our interview can resume. This accounts for at least six hours in Escovedo's life. If he gets horizontal once in that time, he is damned good at disguising it.
After finally sequestering ourselves in the children's bedroom for privacy's sake, I recall a conversation we had at Hole in the Wall maybe two years back with a new understanding: I asked how he was doing. "I've got writer's block," he quipped. "Actually, I've got three writer's blocks." Today, he corrects himself. "It's not writer's block," says Escovedo. "It's writer's lack of time! Time's a rare commodity around here."
That may be true. Yet for all the confidence and authority his Ryko debut radiates, Escovedo entered the project fully believing he'd dipped into his creative well 'til the bucket was banging against the bottom. His two previous records, after all, relied on a large back catalog that was now exhausted. He had songs, or ideas for songs, but couldn't tell if they were worth a damn or not. It took longtime producer Stephen Bruton (whom Escovedo sees as less a producer and more a "collaborator") to help him see the truth.
"I had some older stuff," explains Escovedo, "but a lot of it was new material. I thought I had writer's block, but a lot of it was probably self- induced. But if it wasn't for Bruton, who's been there since I started making records on my own... It's like that story about Andrew Loog Oldham locking Jagger and Richards into that kitchen and telling them not to come out until they'd finished writing a song. Bruton did the same thing with me. He didn't baby me through the whole process. He was just kind of man- to- man with me: `You can write these songs! Just do it! You've gotten better. You're just thinking too much about it.' So, he was really strongwilled about it, and that impressed me -- that he would have that much faith in me."
Watching the rock & roll swagger he musters when fronting Buick MacKane, or witnessing the take- charge command with which he leads his orchestra, it's hard to believe that faith is something Escovedo frequently lacks in himself. An Italian bootleg of a 1977 gig with his old punk rock band the Nuns displays an Escovedo capable of stuttering lead guitar power that would give the Stooges' James Williamson pause. Yet it's taken years of goading to convince Escovedo to reveal that side of his talents again.
"Yeah," says Escovedo, "Michael Corcoran called me the most insecure man he's ever met, and I think there's some truth to that. There are times when I am very unsure, very unconfident." He'll also explain that his brooding ways have led Bruton to dubbing Escovedo "the moody little bastard." ("He wanted me to name my album that. The first one was going to be Moody Little Bastard, and the second one was gonna be Son of the Moody Little Bastard.") Still, Escovedo doesn't think he could've made an album like With These Hands until now. He didn't have the confidence.
"It's been, what? Four years since Gravity?" asks Escovedo. "I couldn't have made a record like With These Hands back then. I've learned a lot about songs, songwriting, production, studios. My vocals, I think, have improved a lot. My confidence in myself has developed. It's a growing thing, y'know? I didn't start playing 'til I was 24. It took me 20 years to get to this point. And that's a long time by other people's standards...."
And with that newfound confidence, The Moody Little Bastard has made a record more fully representative of his sprawling musical dimensions. The rockers now resound with Escovedo's voice rather than the Faces', just as has become the case with Buick MacKane. (As Al puts it, "Instead of sounding like [Ron Wood's] I've Got My Own Album To Do, it sounds like my album.") He's also playing more electric guitar, "so it sounds more like we do live." His quieter, more reflective material is also undergoing some shape- shifting.
"I wanted to get away from the same emotional ground I had mined for so long. I just wanted to think about other things, get my mind off of... I mean, I don't stray too far away from the same kind of terrain, in a way. It's always emotional stuff, it's always kind of personal, autobiographical things. But this time, I think the music is a lot more upbeat. Some of the songs border on being pop songs, or as close as I can get to 'em. I just got fed up with [the old emotional terrain]. Not that I don't feel it anymore, and I'm not in a state of denial. I just didn't want to write about it that much anymore."
Around the time of Thirteen Years, Escovedo told Option magazine he wanted to spend the next record writing about families. Family is something in which Escovedo places a lot of value, whether it's the "family" that comprises his record- making team (Bruton, the absent from- this- record David McNair, Dan Bosworth, Jay Hudson at the Hit Shack, bassist Terry Wilson, pianist Billy Ginn), or his actual family. The latter sometimes play on his records; more often, they just end up in his songs.
"When I was in cinematography class in college," recalls Escovedo, "one of the first teachers to impress me was a guy who really stressed telling your own story, starting with your family and how important that was. That's a great place to start as far as storytelling, documentaries, anything. You can learn a lot about yourself through your family and the relationships that you have with your brothers and sisters, your mother and father. That always meant a lot, and because my family was so big, there was a lot to draw from."
Two key tracks from the new album, "Nickle and a Spoon" and "With These Hands," are especially significant in this manner. The title track is one of Escovedo's oldest songs, written for his father. "Nickel and a Spoon" is a more recent composition, written shortly after his marriage to Smith, about a son who has "failed to meet the expectations his mother's set for him, and he resents it."
"Everyone has been through hard, difficult times with their family," reflects Escovedo. "And those are some of the loneliest times that you'll ever experience, you know? Like when you're going through a strained relationship with your mother or your father, or things that can't be mended with brothers or sisters. I mean, those are horrible. As you get older, you realize, `Well, I'd like to get this together somehow.' But some things can't be mended."
Yet a family get-together is exactly what happened on "With These Hands," recorded while Escovedo was cutting basic tracks for the album "at this place called Castle Oaks in Calabasas, California, out in the middle of nowhere!" He and Bruton were in the studio with longtime Neville Brothers bassist Clutch Hutchinson, drummer Tom Feldman, and pianist Tom Canning when, during a break, Al's brother Pete Escovedo (himself a legendary Latin percussionist and father of Sheila E.) walks in out of the blue with his two sons.
"He had been mixing his record there all week," explains Escovedo with obvious delight, "and that was his last day there. He was upstairs, and we were downstairs, and we didn't even know the other was in the same building. One guy who was engineering for my brother upstairs, was introduced to me when he was downstairs showing us the studio. He went upstairs and said, `Hey, there's another Escovedo downstairs. Any chance you're related?' So, Pete flipped! It was just crazy.
"Sheila called and said, `I wanna play drums on this record.' I said, `Well, that's not gonna happen. We have this drummer, Tom.' We tried to get Sheila to play on the whole record, but it hadn't worked out because of her schedule. So, she says, `Maybe I can do some percussion.' We go, `That'd be great!' Bruton talks to her. She's gotta leave for Japan the next morning, six in the morning or something.
"So, we're cutting some tracks, just basics for some stuff. We stop for a dinner break, and we're eating outside, and this semi pulls up, and these guys start unloading Anvil case after Anvil case after Anvil case with `Sheila E.' stencilled across them! They brought in her whole stage rig, man! Or one of 'em! It was just amazing!
"The whole family played together on that song, which I had written for my dad years ago: Pete was on bongos; Sheila was on timbales; Peter Michael, Pete's son, was on congas; Juan was playing the cajon, a wooden box that you sit on; and then Juanita was playing shakers. It was just really special, really something," he beams. "I was touched."
Of course, "With These Hands" didn't mark the first appearance of Escovedo family members on one of Alejandro's records: Daughter Maya sang and giggled on Gravity's title track, and found herself making another guest appearance on "Nickel and a Spoon."
Escovedo and Bruton were looking to give the track a cinema verite feel, "kind of like a Mexican Tom Waits song or something." The track was thusly layered with the sounds of a backyard party, a broken-down musical trio complete with three-button accordion, and a children's string section that included Maya, the latter brought in to give "Nickel and a Spoon" this "dissonant," "off" tone, "like a Shirelles harmony done on violins." Still, the track lacked something. Something named Willie Nelson.
"We were listening to the playback," recounts Escovedo, "and when the solo part came up, we decided, `Wow! This would be great for Willie!' And Bruton had been playing something similar, a Willie- like solo -- that Django [Reinhardt] thing he does so well. We called up [Nelson's harp player] Mickey Raphael, who had played on Thirteen Years. He was in Nashville, and he had just gotten off a tour. He said, `Call Willie on the bus!' They were driving back to Austin, to Pedernales.
"So we call him up. H[e] and Bruton get on the line, and they're telling jokes back and forth, they always try to top each other with jokes. He just asked, `When do you need me? Give me a time.' He came in, man, and he was beautiful. He brought in that old Baldwin amp, and that old guitar, Trigger, and played. Then he sang a verse, nailed it, made it his song. He made that song his own. We referred to that song from then on as `Willie's song.'
"Mickey Raphael later told me that he loves this party atmosphere when he's recording. When they used to cut all his albums, there would be just like whole bunch of people rolling this and that, handing it to him in the middle of the take. And he's fine with that! So, we decided we wanted to surprise Edith [Casimir, Pork's drummer]. We told her to come over -- to drop something off -- because she's a huge, huge Willie Nelson fan.
"So, she comes to the studio. We were in the `B' Room of the Hit Shack, which is just one room, the machines are there in the same room with the musicians. A lot of people started coming in to check [Willie] out, [one-time Dylan sidekick] Bobby Neuwirth is filming the whole thing. And Edith comes in, she looks out there, and I say, `Do you see who that is?' She's not really making him out. Finally, I say, `Go out there and see who that is!' And she goes out there, realizes who it is, and breaks down, starts weeping uncontrollably, just loses it. Apparently, she used to have dreams that Willie Nelson was her father. So, he was really sweet to her, really sweet to all of us. And it was the first time I ever heard anyone sing my songs. I will never, never forget that. It was great."
Escovedo has had other encounters with Nelson over the years, and always found him "encouraging." "But," he smirks, "it wasn't always in the greatest way."
"Rank and File made this video [for the song, "Rank and File"], and it was this really silly, stupid video with us in cowboy hats and what have you, all our little cowboy gear," says Escovedo. "It's too bad it was for that song, because I wrote it. It was this Village People western. And I'd heard that Willie and his boys would get out there to his country club, smoke beaucoups amounts of ganja, get totally baked, and just have this big hoot fest over that Rank and File video. They'd have it on auto- rewind, just so they could watch it over and over and over again, and laugh and laugh.
"So," smirks Escovedo again, "that's one way that I know Willie."
Bruton may call Escovedo "The Moody Little Bastard", but The Bastard also happens to be a lucky one. He may go through some brutally bad patches, but when Escovedo bounces back, it's with the spring of a Wamm-o Superball. He's just made the best record of his career, yet it's one that hints that Escovedo's peak is a ways off. He's getting to work with musicians he's always admired (including keyboardist Steve Barber, an Abilene native whose resume has entries ranging from "Joseph Zawinul" to "Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theater"). And though he and Dana Smith struggle to hold together their family and home, at least they're struggling on an income mostly derived from Al's music.
"Yeah, that's a big difference," agrees Escovedo. "I sell my own music now, and not other people's music." Not that his days clerking at Waterloo were wasted: He actually met the people at his current label, Rykodisc, through that job.
"Ryko's a great label," he says. "The interesting thing for me is that they have no desire to make me anything that I'm not. They're trying real hard to make this thing as classy as possible. It's a great place to be. I love those people, they're great people. They're all record collectors, they're music people. Hanging out with them is not like hanging out with most industry cheeseballs. They're real people.
"And it's the perfect place for me. I have no aspirations of being with this huge mega- corporation, trying to compete with Hootie and the Blowfish. That doesn't interest me. I feel like with Ryko, I can get enough support to sell a real respectable amount of records. Let's hope. Who knows what's gonna happen? I would think I could survive that way. And I think I have a life with them, a relationship that I can develop with them."
They don't seem the types to sign a band just to drop them?
"No, it's not MCA.
"I know that with Ryko," Escovedo adds hopefully, "I'm gonna get more of a chance than I ever have before, with any of the labels I've been with: More than Slash, more than EMI... definitely more than EMI!" he laughs.
"Watermelon is a great label, too. They tried as hard as they could. But they're limited, man, and it's not their fault, and it's not saying there's anything wrong with them. It's just the nature of this business. I know that with Ryko, though, I will get a decent chance."
The Moody Little Bastard stares into his Newcastle Ale for a moment, reflecting. "Maybe," he muses, "I will get a chance." n