More Miles Than Money by Garth Cartwright

Author:Garth Cartwright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 2010-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

Mural man: Cesar Chavez remembered

OK, let’s talk about the Austin music scene you became part of.

‘Austin’s a wonderful place. For me more than anything else it was here I met all those great songwriters. Townes Van Zandt, I don’t think people really realise just how great he was, the depth of his songwriting, the poetry that poured out of him. Eventually other things took over and he lost his way as far as the songs go but he was unique, he never compromised, and he was so young when he wrote so many great songs. Doug Sahm, well, we shared a passion for a San Francisco baseball team and he liked to smoke pot and so did I so we’d get stoned and talk baseball for hours. He was a great guy, a lot of fun. Joe Ely, I learned a lot from him because when I first started off solo I toured with him, both of us playing acoustic, on one of what Joe calls his “Tours of Texas”, and as far as taking it to the stage and really performing your songs, he’s a master. He’s one of the guys who has really, really lived it.’

Van Zandt and Sahm both died in the late-nineties, wrung out by a lifetime of hard living. Ely remains on the road, performing superbly if never quite matching the promise he showed in the mid-seventies. And Escovedo, a man who found his voice only after swapping several cities, wives and bands, is trying to explain how he hates being labelled, especially as ‘alt.country’, the mid-1990s tag given to an explosion of interest in country-flavoured music.

‘Words are important to me. That’s one reason I didn’t join the typical Latin dance band. I want people to pay attention to my songs. The storytelling, guitar-oriented songs of rock ’n’ roll fit with the Mexican corrido tradition which I was exposed to by my father and relatives. My parents would have barbecue parties and after they’d had enough beers, they’d break out guitars. My aunt would start singing and they’d all start crying. That’s where I’m coming from. Alt-country, to me, is Ryan Adams prancing around pretending to be Elton John. That’s garbage.’

Escovedo’s music possesses an emotional eloquence rare today. ‘What kind of love/destroys a mother?’ he sings of his wife’s suicide and it is his ability to convey lived experience which gives his songs such resonance.

‘I never thought of myself as a great lyricist but I want to get the emotion of a song across. That’s always what I’ve loved. The songwriters that I love, I always get the impression I know them, that I’ve had a conversation with them once I finish listening to their music. With the death of Bobbie there was a lot of emotional blockage, trauma. I had to get it out somehow. If I hadn’t had the voice in music I don’t know what I would have done.’

I mention how I’m heading to San Antonio to interview Tex-Mex legend Lydia Mendoza. Alejandro smiles and recalls his parents playing her 78s.

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