Alejandro Escovedo, who has made stops at the Royal Theatre in Danville the past two years, has a new album, Street Songs of Love, coming out next Tuesday (June 29) and you can hear it all now, streaming at NPR.
Escovedo, who gained some new fans with a one-off live performance of his song “Always a Friend” on stage with Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band during their Magic tour stop in Texas, has Bruce sing on the new record.
Most interesting, thought, is the process Escovedo employed to create the album. He took his band, The Sensitive Boys, into the Continental Club in Austin for a show every Tuesday night for two months, and built the record – on stage, in front of an audience.
Escovedo recounts the story on his website:
“We would bring in three new songs every Tuesday night,” he says of his modus operandi, “and we would play them acoustically first for the audience, and then I’d bring in the rhythm section, and slowly but surely we would add each piece, like the singers. I had wanted to bring in horns, but it never made it to that point. But still, the audience could watch the songs develop.
“It was interesting to see it grow and blossom. It started with the room half full, but it built until the last one sold out. Every week it became more intense with the album taking shape in front of us organically, a work in progress. It’s as if it knew where it wanted to go, so that by the end of those two months we had watched songs begin with a verse and a chorus and become what we felt were complete compositions. And then we took that on the road for two and a half weeks, leading us from Austin to playing our first gig in Little Rock, and then working our way to Louisville, Kentucky, and then the following day we went to Lexington and started making the record.
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Click here to watch two live videos recorded at Rolling Stone
Alejandro’s website
album reviews/previews
Indiana Music: Bobbie Lancaster's self-titled album
An earthy, rootsy, sexy sound on Bobbie Lancaster’s self-titled debut solo album flows through the record’s ten cuts, showing Lancaster as a folk and Americana artist who is set to become a worthy Hoosier contributor to the modern heartland sound. Album opener “What You Do To Me” lays the blueprint for the record: soaring vocals that build, almost so subtly, that by the end of a song, you’ve got goosebumps. Her voice is that expressive.
Roots-Rock Album: Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes – "Pills and Ammo"
Fans of authentic East Coast/R&B/Jersey Shore rock and roll need to take a listen to the new album from Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. Pills and Ammo is newly released (info at southsidejohnny.com) and the record has a decided (and welcome) rock and roll edge.
from his website:
“While still tinged with the exuberant rhythm and blues feel that is the Jukes’ trademark, and loaded with the driving sound of the legendary Jukes horn section, this new CD has a sharper, guitar-oriented, rock and roll feel to it. A harder edge for harder times.”
→ Hear “One More Night to Rock”
Indiana Music: Gypsy Revival
In the end, it’s the final song, “Days to Come”, from the new self-titled Gypsy Revival EP, that gives a listener reason to think these guys are worth following. Clearly the rootsiest, most country rock take on the record, it sounds like they’ve been listening to Old Crow Medicine Show, as they make the line “Back then, everybody was living to be laid; today, everybody is living to be laid” sound tossed off and brilliant at the same time.
Indiana Music: Chase Coy -"Picturesque"
Chase Coy , a smart 19-year-old singer-songwriter from Greenwood, Indiana, will release his major label debut Picturesque on June 1st. Written and produced by Coy, it’s a quiet, poetic piece of acoustic-and-string sprinkled music. It’s best moments ring of a McCartney sensibility. Not comparing the two artists’ careers; simply noting that the template for mature-beyond-your-years songs was created by the Beatle, and there is a thinking, searching pop quality to the upcoming album.
Coy is a busy boy. He’s already released a pair of albums, Dear Juliet and Look How Far We’ve Come, and some iTunes songs. This year, Coy’s catalog tracks were compiled into a single digital album available at iTunes, entitled Where the Road Parts.
As Taylor Swift has built her career of singing to 15-25 year-old girls, the Picturesque album would seem to aim for a similar demo, but to guys – though the girls will find reasons to listen to the words, since the muse of Coy is his girlfriend Mallory Koons. The subject matter gives a soft, introspective side to most of the songs. Nothing rocks. The drums are a surprise when they show up. It’s not a party album; the songs are produced to highlight lyrics. The album is unlike anything I have heard in a long time. It’s poetry, set to muted music.
Mellencamp Announces Pair of Album Releases, Film Documentary
John Mellencamp has announced the release dates for two albums and a film documentary, and will hit the road for some summer and fall tour dates.
First comes the official announcement of On the Rural Route 7609, a four-CD set, coming June 15, that includes 12 unreleased tracks — including writing demos of “Jack and Diane,” “Authority Song” and “Cherry Bomb” and poetic readings of songs like “The Real Life” by actress Joanne Woodward. The 54 tracks and each disc is set up as an individual album with common themes rather than being presented in chronological order.
Many of Mellencamp’s biggest hits, such as “Hurts So Good,” “Paper in Fire” and “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.” are not on the album.
“I have no interest in going back and putting together a bunch of hits,” Mellencamp explained on his website. “I had this idea of discovery. I think all of those songs (on On the Rural Route 7609) were overlooked…I thought this was just a good way to say, ‘OK, so this isn’t about hit records. This is about what the rest of these albums were about ”
Rounder Records, a new label for Mellencamp, will release No Better Than This, on August 3. Produced by T Bone Burnett, it’s an album of all new original songs recorded at a variety of historically significant locations around the South. Mellencamp told billboard.com that he wrote the thirteen songs included on the album during a thirteen-day span last spring.
“I was tightly focused,” he related, “I got up every day and wrote and wrote and wrote.”
Among the locations were the First African Baptist Church, the first Black church in North America dating to pre-revolutionary times. The original congregation and ministry were slaves; the church, in fact, provided sanctuary to runaways before emancipation. He and his wife Elaine were baptized there before the sessions commenced, and he has a home in the area.
They also recorded at Sun Studios, using a 1955 Ampex tape machine and establishing a makeshift recording booth in a construction shed in a vacant lot next door. Mellencamp and his musicians arranged themselves on the studio floor in accordance with markings that had been laid down by Sam Phillips many years before for optimal presence.
He also recorded in Room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio is where Robert Johnson first recorded for Brunswick Records in November of 1936.
Filmmaker Kurt Markus documented the No Better Than This sessions for a movie that Mellencamp plans to use to open a run of theater shows that’s slated to begin in October.The concerts will include the movie, a stripped-down acoustic set with his band, a solo segment and then a fully electrified rock set.
He said the record was “the most fun I’ve ever had making a record in my life. It was about making music — organic music made by real musicians — that’s heartfelt and written from the best place it can come from”.
Mellencamp, who’s playing four shows in July, has plans for minor league baseball stadium dates with Bob Dylan later this summer, according to his website.
See tour dates
Track list on page 2