Alejandro Escovedo’s new album – Big Station – is set for a June 5 release on Fantasy/Concord. By then the artist will have already been on the road for a few weeks. Known for his mix of punk, country, solid songwriting and high-energy performances, Escovedo’s latest journey begins in St. Louis at Off Broadway May 15. The U.S. routing will take him through the heartland, The South and the East Coast, playing such places as Madison, Wis., at the High Noon Saloon May 20; Chicago’s Lincoln Hall May 23; Memphis at the 1884 Lounge May 29; Morgantown, W.Va. at Mountain Stage June 3; Albany, N.Y., at The Egg June 15; and Croton-On-Hudson, N.Y., at the Clearwater Festival June 17.

New York City also comes into play with Escovedo playing the Big Apple’s Bowery Ballroom June 5, the day Big Station drops. Escovedo will return to the city to play NYC’s BBQ Block Party June 10.

May 15 through 20 features Escovedo performing in the duo format while shows scheduled for May 22 and after feature the artist with a full band. VisitAlejandroEscovedo.com for more information.

Jay Smith, Pollstar – April 6, 2012

http://www.pollstar.com/news_article.aspx?ID=801005&

Escovedo will kick off a U.S. tour next month before Big Station‘s release:

5/16 Lasalle, IL – Uptown Grill
5/18 Sioux City, IA – Crystal Ballroom
5/19 Iowa City, IA – The Mill Benefit Show
5/20 Madison, WI – High Noon Saloon
5/22 Des Moines, IA – Wooly’s
5/23 Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
5/24 Milwaukee, WI – Turner Hall
5/26 Indianapolis, IN – White Rabbit
5/27 Louisville, KY – Headliners
5/29 Memphis, TN – 1884 Lounge
5/30 Nashville, TN – Music City Roots
6/1 Ashville, NC – Grey Eagle
6/2 Roanoke, VA – Kirk Avenue Music Hall
6/3 Morgantown, WV – Mountain Stage
6/5 ­New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom
6/6 East Hampton, NY – Stephen Talkhouse
6/9 Northampton, MA – Iron Horse
6/10 ­New York, NY – BBQ Block Party
6/11 Hoboken, NJ – Maxwell’s
6/12 ­Washington, DC – Birchmere
6/13 Wilmington, DE – World Café Live
6/15 Albany, NY – The Egg
6/16 Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall
6/17 Croton-on-Hudson, NY – Clearwater Festival

To Listen to the new track, please visit:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/song-exclusive-alejandro-escovedo-man-of-the-world-20120404#ixzz1rC9Kq01T

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/song-exclusive-alejandro-escovedo-man-of-the-world-20120404

Texas singer, songwriter and blues rocker Alejandro Escovedo announced his 11th solo album today, which is titled Big Station. The album is set for a June 5 release on Fantasy Records/Concord Music Group. On the follow-up to 2010’s Street Songs of Love, which debuted at the top of Billboard’s Heatseekers chart, Escovedo worked with frequent co-writer Chuck Prophet and producer Tony Visconti.

The 12-track record references themes of love and belonging, as well as homes and homelands. “Bottom of the World” name-checks Austin (where he currently resides), “Sally Was a Cop” details the political corruption of Mexico, and the closing song “Sabor a Mi,” written by the late Mexican composer Alvaro Carrillo in 1959, pays homage to the man and their shared roots.

Check out the track list for Big Station below and stay tuned for more information on the album and Escovedo’s tour schedule coming soon.

Track List:
1. Man Of The World
2. Big Station
3. Sally Was A Cop
4. Bottom Of The World
5. Can’t Make Me Run
6. San Antonio Rain
7. Headstrong Crazy Fools
8. Common Mistake
9. Never Stood A Chance
10. Party People
11. Too Many Tears
12. Sabor A Mi

Hilary Saunders, March 29, 2012 pastemagazine.com

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2012/03/alejandro-escovedo-announces-new-album-big-station.html

Photo: Todd V. Wolfson

Bruce Springsteen opened his SXSW blitz a night early, making a surprise appearance on lead guitar and occasional vocals during Alejandro Escovedo‘s closing set at the 30th annual Austin Music Awards, at the Austin Music Hall on March 14th. “We need one more guitar player,” Texas singer-songwriter Joe Ely declared after performing “The Highway Is My Home” with Escovedo and his band the Sensitive Boys. Springsteen – scheduled to own the town the next day, with a highly anticipated keynote speech and an evening concert with the E Street Band – walked on in a black-and-white checked shirt, with a modest grin, to a roar of delight from the audience. Ely immediately kicked into “The Midnight Train,” a song by his Flatlanders bandmate Jimmie Dale Gilmore, with Springsteen taking a pair of meaty feedback-laden guitar solos.

Escovedo told a story about his own guest shot at a Springsteen gig, in Houston a couple of years ago, and “how it changed my life,” before reprising the song the two played at that show, “Always a Friend,” from Escovedo’s 2010 album, Street Songs of Love. Ely, Escovedo and Springsteen then alternated verses and harmonized in the traditional pilgrim’s song, “Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad,” with Springsteen firing dirty-metal lead-guitar breaks.

Springsteen was about to leave the stage when Escovedo called, “One more!”, and brought out one of his earlier guests, New York singer-songwriter Garland Jeffreys, for a version of the Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden.” Jeffreys handled lead vocals, but Springsteen played tart fills, like a New Jersey-born Keith Richards, and took a howling turn in the song’s signature litany: “Am I hard enough/Am I rough enough/Am I rich enough/I’m not to blind to see.”

By DAVID FRICKE, rollingstone.com March 15, 2012

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bruce-springsteen-makes-surprise-appearance-at-austin-music-awards-20120315#ixzz1pCAqc3yP

Tuning his guitar, he was warmly greeted by a capacity crowd of about 200.

“Thank you for coming to Freehold,” one crowd member called out.

“Oh, you’re welcome,” said Escovedo, a revered road warrior of a singer-songwriter from Texas. “You know I love playing here.”

No placating there.

Escovedo, who just turned 61, is used to more intimate settings when he visits here. As in playing solo in the backyard of Mark Costanzo, who lives across town, or grabbing a spare guitar and playing with Costanzo’s son’s band, The Trademarks, in the family’s basement, as one of many acclaimed acts who’ve quietly passed through town to perform for a series of shows at Costanzo’s home called “Concerts in the Studio.”

Escovedo and Costanzo are the two constants here. This show Sunday afternoon, though intimate beyond most fans’ wildest dreams, was actually an expansion on the studio concert series that Costanzo, with the backing of borough leadership, intends to make a regular occurrence at the same locales as bake sales and bingo games.

It is called “Live From Freehold,” and Freehold, watch out.

Alejandro Escovedo and the Sensitive Boys is the type of band that plays by the credo of giving it your all, be it in front of two people or 1,000. Rangy and almost always bent at the knees, Escovedo glided through nearly two hours of material with the energy of a teenage upstart with something to prove but the proficiency of a lifetime performer who’s seen a thing or two and wants to tell you all about it.

Running through a series of openers designed to get the blood pumping (“This Bed’s Getting Crowded,” “Tender Heart” and a drawn-out, solo-a-minute version of “Chelsea Hotel ’78”), Escovedo drew the crowd close when he wanted to.

“We’re gonna bring it down a little bit,” he said, trading the electric guitar for an acoustic.

He tested out some new songs — he intends for a new release in May — but delivered fan favorites (“Rosalie,” “Down in the Bowery”) when asked.

And in between there were moments when the crowd couldn’t help but interject with applause, usually right after Escovedo’s lead guitarist, David Pulkingham, wound himself back into the rhythm section from popping off a marksman-like solo.

The Trademarks, a trio of teenage boys, joined Escovedo for the poppy sing-along “Always a Friend,” which was the highlight for both bands, if grins count as a gauge.

“Pretty soon they’re going to be saying, ‘Freehold, New Jersey, this is where the Trademarks are from — and some other guy,’ ” Escovedo said with a figurative wink to his pal, Bruce Springsteen.

Until then, it’s “Live From Freehold.”

Dustin Racioppi

http://www.app.com/article/20120123/NJNEWS/301230011/Bringing-the-concert-out-of-the-studio

photo: Jason Towlen, courierpostonline.com

Just as Escovedo found a way to incorporate everything from folk to garage rock into his music, he’s similarly found ways to adapt his songs to any number of settings, from chamber outfits to solo performances. Saturday night at the Old Town School of Folk Music, for example, the first of two performances, it was just Escovedo and guitarist David Pulkingham, but between Escovedo’s songs and Pulkingham’s expressive playing, the pair had little trouble transforming what could have been a sedate night into something akin to one of Escovedo’s transcendent band shows.

Of course, it helped that Escovedo has built up such a casual, comfortable rapport with his fans, which explains how he could get away with starting the evening with an as yet unreleased track, “Sally Was a Cop,” inspired by the violence of the ongoing Mexican drug war. Escovedo followed that song with another preview of his next album, a less chilling tune called “San Antonio Rain.” After that, though, Escovedo reverted to tried and true crowd-pleasing peaks, from heartbreaking ballads such as “Broken Bottle” (performed unamplified in the middle of the crowd) to “Everybody Loves Me” and “I was Drunk,” both of which stomped and roared, right down to fiery solos from Pulkingham, despite the acoustic setting.

If the wide grin he flashed across the stage between songs was any indication, Escovedo knows he’s got a good thing going with Pulkingham at his side. At 61 and a few years past a serious health scare, Escovedo seemed more than happy to have someone as talented as Pulkingham on hand to share the heavy lifting, as rapt watching him dance across the frets as the audience was entranced by such stirring songs as the autobiographical immigrant’s tale “Wave,” the lovely “Rosalie” and the always rousing “Castanets.”

Joshua Klein

ctc-arts@tribune.com

There was some twenty years of music making before he went solo. The San Antonio native grew up near Los Angeles and spent his young life on the streets of San Francisco, selling drugs and doing whatever he could “not to work and to play rock and roll music.” After breaking onto the mid-70s punk scene, he later wedded that aesthetic with roots rock in the band Rank and File. After settling in Austin, Escovedo thrashed with his brother Javier in the three-guitar band True Believers (affectionately known as The Troobs) and fronted the alt-country Buick MacKane. By the time I first saw him perform in the early 1990s, he was already riding tall in the Austin music scene even as he worked in a record store to make ends meet as a single parent.

(LIST: The All-TIME 100 Songs)

The 1992 release of Gravity, Escovedo’s first solo album, is where music fans and critics began to truly appreciate his songwriting prowess. His reputation as a must-see live performer of those songs grew in Austin and beyond. In the early years of the South by Southwest music festival, his post-event gigs with an “orchestra” of some of the town’s best players were well worth staying an extra night for. Or three. Beginning November 18, Escovedo, who turned 60 this year, will play a trio of nights at the exquisite Rubin Museum of Art in New York City, where he’ll perform songs from his first two albums.

There’s a heaviness to Gravity, which was written after the suicide of Escovedo’s wife. Though many songs are upbeat, the album begins with an invitation to a hanging and ends with a sneering laugh. He quickly followed it with Thirteen Years, a concept album that channeled the love and loss of his former relationship into 11 songs interwoven with interludes from the title track’s theme. But the album is far from maudlin. The pieces range from ballads to high-energy tales of powerful, towering women, and the arrangements blend strings with Escovedo’s guitar in a way few others can. When my own 13-year relationship ended, I turned to that album, and its beauty helped suture a gaping wound of loss. (Even the title tune, written from the point of view of a woman married to a rock musician for that unlucky number of years, resonated in surprising ways.)

In a 2010 TIME interview (excerpted in the video above, which played on the magazine’s iPad edition) Escovedo described some of his early albums as hard-to-take, confessional works: “the kind of albums you play when you want everyone to leave the party.” These days, he wants everyone to stay. His latest two discs (2008′s Real Animal and last year’s Street Songs of Love) are upbeat rockers that give the strings a rest and offer the audience “something to smile about.”

Confessional works have a funny way of remaining true even as they change hues over time. I expect that will be the case during his brief residency at the Rubin Museum. On the first night, he’ll perform Gravity in its entirety, joined by long-time fellow traveler David Pulkingham — one of the best guitarists playing on any stage. The following night, violinist Susan Voelz, formerly of Poi Dog Pondering — and who has toured with Escovedo off and on over two decades—will join Escovedo and Pulkingham to play Thirteen Years.

In the almost two decades since Thirteen Years, Escovedo has added seven more original albums to his discography; each of them has extraordinary power and some were produced by big names. But many fans agree it’s a bigger treat to hear the songs performed live, with different interpretations depending on who’s playing with Escovedo on a given night. For those who can’t make these shows in New York, he still tours the country and plays regularly in Austin. In a crowd-pleasing tune he often plays live, Escovedo, acting the coy troubadour, laments “everybody says they love me, but I don’t know why.” If he really wants to know, just about anybody in the audience would have an easy answer.

Craig Duff

Read more: http://entertainment.time.com/2011/11/17/the-incredible-gravity-of-being-alejandro-escovedo/#ixzz1dzh2mokV