Alejandro Escovedo

The scope of Alejandro Escovedo’s life in music is staggering. Born in 1951 in San Antonio, Texas, to a mariachi musician father, Escovedo relocated to California with his family as a teenager. He ended up doing punk with The Nuns in San Francisco; alt-country with Rank And File in Austin; and roots rock with the True Believers. But he didn’t go solo until 1992’s Gravity, released a year after the suicide of his second wife, Bobbie Levie. Through a dynamic meld of folk, rock, blues and country, Escovedo deftly handles themes of love and death on that record, establishing his prowess and stylistic diversity as a songwriter. His work since has followed suit—he turns despair into sweeping, folky grace on 1999’s “I Was Drunk”; explores lusty blues rock on 2001’s “Castanets”; and makes a Springsteen-approved rocker with 2008’s “Always A Friend”. He’s never stopped dealing with heavy subjects: in 2018 he released The Crossing, an album about Italian and Mexican immigrants seeking the American dream, which he followed with a Spanish-language version, La Cruzada, in 2020.