Alejandro Escovedo with friends

Alejandro Escovedo is one of the musical jewels of Austin. At the Austin Music Awards show, he was the closing act, and he brought many of his musical friends with him on stage. Among them Bruce Springsteen, Joe Ely, Dan Dyer and Garland Jeffreys.

Escovedo comes from a family of musicians in San Antonio, among them his niece, Sheila E. He started out in a punk/new wave, but moved to Austin in 1982 and joined the band Rank and File. He gradually changed to a more rootsy style, and with his first two solo albums, Gravity and Thirteen Years, he had establishd his own characteristic style.

Alejandro Escovedo has never reached the big market that he truly deserves, but he is valued by musicians and the Austin audience alike. WHen he fell critically ill in 2003 and wasn’t able to pay his medical bills, some of his friends made a double CD, Por Vida: A Tribute to the Songs of Alejandro Escovedo, where all the proceedings went to a foundation set up to pay his expenses. Among the friends who participated here, are Steve Earle, Jon Dee Graham, Lucinda Williams, John Cale, Jennifer Warnes, Ian Hunter, The Jayhawks, and Son Volt plus some Sheila E and others from his big family.