English
ItalianoProduzioni
Echo Dancing
Alejandro Escovedo
Alejandro Escovedo's New Album ECHO DANCING is an adventure in Life.
No one has really ever been able to define themselves and their music like singer-songwriter Alejandro Escovedo does. His life in music of all kinds sometimes feels like a swirl through the sky, where his songs point out all the majesty and mystery of how he sees the world. The sounds he makes take him places that he might not even predict, but once there, greatness always follows.
It has happened over and over for decades, almost like a fateful agreement he has with the cosmos. There is a good chance it cannot be explained, especially by him. Maybe that's because this is a musician who feels magic, both in himself and the world around him, and is open to the experience of whatever comes his way.
On this new album, Alejandro has taken a road rarely traveled, which is totally in keeping with how he has lived his life in music. Echo Dancing is an experiment in how to use the past to shape the future. By recording completely new and repurposed versions of songs from his past, he actually gets a chance to rewrite his own history. It's also an idea that pushes growth into the present, and asks an artist to see themselves anew.
"I was planning this record just prior to boarding a plane to Italy to record with Don Antonio and Nicola Peruch," Escovedo says. "My original idea was to record an album of new material. But then I changed my mind and thought that revisiting songs from my various past albums throughout my career would be more interesting. I have a great faith in these two artists to always create something interesting with whatever I might bring to the session. These songs were already dressed for the dance."
Everything on Echo Dancing has a feeling of absolute freshness about it, and at the same time, there is a strong link to the past. It's almost like reincarnation in the recording studio, but everything seems brand new. All the musicians are dedicated to finding the new amongst the songs' prior history. “It is not something that happens often, and it surely has never occurred quite like it does on this fascinating new collection. To keep moving forward no matter what it takes. That's why I continue to work on new ways to tell these stories."
Biography
A son of a Mexican immigrant and a Texas native, a member of the first-wave punk rock group The Nuns in San Francisco, Alejandro moved to New York and joined the Judy Nylon band and experienced the total electricity of the late 1970s there.
Moving then to Austin was a radical shift of geography and musical style when Escovedo helped form one of the country's first so-called Cowpunk adventurers. It often seems like the man has been on a pirate-like adventure through the kinds of music he is drawn to. Those sounds are usually new and often have a strong edge of the avant-garde in them.
Deeply embedded in the burgeoning Austin scene in the 1980s, Escovedo was a prime architect in the new band True Believers, which included his brother Javier and Jon Dee Graham. In many ways the band helped build the gateway to the whole burgeoning Americana music scene which prospers to this day, but it was also the turning point for Alejandro Escovedo to take his life in his control and record solo albums.
In the thirty-plus years since that decision has come a wild roller-coaster ride of groups, spinoffs, tribute albums and even original dramatic projects and experiments. In 1998, No Depression Magazine named him Artist of the Decade. For this musician, though, that was just the start of a life that twists and turns wherever Escovedo's clearly uninhibited imagination takes him.
The 21st century has been a time of widely successful excursions that only a few American musicians are able to create. Between adventurous solo albums, continuing collaborations with other musicians, and an ever-growing sense of boundary-breaking, Alejandro has created his own definition of what a modern rock artist can accomplish.
Which is exactly why Echo Dancing comes at the perfect time. While it does seem Escovedo has his own category of accomplishments, to now bring together these songs he has previously recorded and inject such exciting new and different life into them is a complete exoneration of his belief in the future.
Echo Dancing
1. John Conquest
2. Sacramento & Polk
3. Bury Me
4. Everybody Loves Me
5. Too Many Tears
6. Castañuelas
7. Outside Your Door
8. Sensitive Boys
9. Thought I'd Let You Know
10. Swallows of San Juan
11. Last to Know
12. MC Overload
13. Inside This Dance
14. Wave
All songs written by Alejandro Escovedo
Arranged and produced by Alejandro Escovedo, Don Antonio e Nicola Peruch
Engineered by Ivano Giovedì at Crinale Lab, Brisighella, RA
Studio assistant Francesco Cinque
Mixed by Ivano Giovedì at Waveroof Studio, Castel Bolognese, RA
Mastered by Brent Lambert at The Kitchen Mastering, Carrboro, NC, USA
Edizioni Yep Roc, LLC.
Art Director Photography Nancy Rankin Escovedo | Layout Nathan Golub
LINE-UP
Alejandro Escovedo: voice, guitars
Don Antonio: guitars, bass, bass VI, organ, mellotron, electronics
Nicola Peruch: piano, hammond, farfisa, wurlitzer, programming, modular synths
Special guest
Sergio Marazzi: backing vocals on Wave
Nancy Rankin Escovedo: backing vocals on Castañuelas
Gianni Perinelli: soprano saxophone on MC Overload
