Alejandro Escovedo Plays Vivarium

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Music Features

In July of 2022, Alejandro Escovedo played a life-affirming show in the parking lot of Boone & Crockett. It felt like a backyard concert, that is, if you could ignore the surreality of the massive cruise ship docked across the harbor let alone the bright neon Ferris wheel over at the Big Gig: shepherdexpress.com/music/concert-reviews/alejandro-escovedo-turns-the-cooperage-into-his-backyard.

He recently recalled that show as being one of the first times real live rock and roll shook off the hibernation of the pandemic.

Escovedo returns to Milwaukee for a show Tuesday, April 23 at Vivarium, 8 p.m.

The title of his new album, Echo Dancing, goes a long way to explain the songs. In a career that began in the late ‘70s—his group The Nuns opened the infamous final show by the Sex Pistols—Escovedo has forged forward. 

With the new album he takes a breath and reimagines songs from his own past. “I always feel that a well-written song can withstand a lot of abuse,” Escovedo says. “Turning a past song inside out leads to discovery of new ideas you might not have understood about the song,” he says. “Even lyrical refurbishing has proven helpful and effective. It's like interpreting your own work anew. The songs never seem to be complete. They are always evolving.”

No stranger to Milwaukee, over the years Escovedo has played memorable free festivals in town: a headline slot at Gil Fest where the group cooly slid onstage in time from a show in Canada; a rain-defying show in 2017 at WMSE’s Backyard BBQ at Humboldt Park, as well as shows at Shank Hall and The Back Room at Colectivo. 

Por Vida

In 2003, when Escovedo was diagnosed with complications of the liver due to Hepatitis C (riverwestcurrents.org/2003/08/under-the-influence.html) Milwaukee musicians banded together to play a benefit show. That evening’s lineup included The Mighty Deerlick, a band that toured years before as the The Slow Pedestrians opening shows for Escovedo’s True Believers—days that he recalls fondly.

Escovedo also got support during his time of crisis from the likes of John Cale, Lucinda Williams, Ian Hunter and Lenny Kaye. Escovedo says the artists who contributed versions of his songs to the double CD Por Vida meant the world to him. 

These days he can look back at a career and the lessons he’s learned in taking time to put himself first health-wise but once the band takes the stage, he says the music still takes over. What advice would he give to a young Alejando Escovedo just starting out? He says believe in what you are doing, don’t be too self-critical or pay too much attention to outside advice. 

Desert island disc? He admits it is a tough question and then blurts out, “Exile.” The Rolling Stones epic Exile on Main St., the pastiche of things that became rock and roll culture, with whiffs of gospel music and lowdown blues—it is not difficult to see Escovedo as a point on that timeline.