Over the course of his long career, Alejandro Escovedo has collaborated compositionally, but for Real Animal, he co-wrote all its songs with guitarist and roots savant in his own right Chuck Prophet. The two share commonalities – both have California roots and are known for their idiosyncratic musical vision – making the disc easily among Escovedo’s best.
“We’ve known each other a long time, crossed paths in the life,” recounts Prophet. “We were playing some gigs in California a couple of years ago, and he mentioned to me that he had an idea for a record and did I think that was something I would do. I said, ‘We could try.’
“So I went to Wimberley, and we spent three or four days talking and listening to records. The thing that made it work was that we have that thing like putting two wires together. When we start talking, we spark. We’ve always enjoyed each other’s company, so the songs started to come out of that. I think Al and myself are what you might call raconteurs. We like to tell stories, and we relate on that level, and that’s where a lot of the songs that we wrote came from. We just melted it down into lines that rhymed.”
It wasn’t the traditional one writes lyrics and the other comes up with riffs, either.
“When you co-write,” Prophet explains, “there’s that thing that happens where you’re performing for each other. If we got on a riff or something, Al and I would perform for each other, and I think that ended up making the songs more fun. There were times when we’d get into some juvenile shit, and we would just be rolling on the floor laughing. Especially ‘Nuns Song,’ where I walked in the room and Al was playing ’96 Tears’ on his guitar, and he started goofing. I have a cassette of it somewhere. It’s like 60 minutes long. I just ended up listening back to it and typing out what I thought were the best bits. That was really it. You can hear us laugh.
“When we got worked up into a lather on some of the more fun songs, I often wondered if somebody looking through the window might not be tempted to call the cops.”
This article appears in June 20 • 2008.