IN CONCERT
Alejandro Escovedo and the Sensitive Boys
When: Sunday, 7 p.m.
Where: Upstairs Cabaret,
15 Bastion Sq.
Tickets: $28 at Ditch Records, Lyle's Place and
brownpapertickets.com; $32 at the door
Almost immediately after he was cleared of symptoms relating to hepatitis C, the disease that nearly took his life, singer-songwriter Alejandro Escovedo resumed doing what he does better than most -- making records.
Seven years and five critically acclaimed albums later, Escovedo is still at it, with yet another new recording, Big Station, in stores, and plans for the next one already bouncing around in his head.
"After I was ill, I had a real sense of mortality," Escovedo said. "I want to do it while I can, and still look fairly good. There's still a lot to say."
For a few years, Escovedo was living on borrowed time. A musician who makes his living on the road, Escovedo largely ignored his hepatitis diagnosis until it was almost too late. But with help from scores of his fellow musicians, who raised money to help pay his medical bills, he got back on his feet and eventually sent the disease into remission.
An unlikely side effect of his struggle was the newfound confidence that developed -- one that comes from having tribute albums and benefit concerts staged in your honour by the likes of Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Ian Hunter and Lenny Kaye.
The 61-year-old said he is feeling better than ever about his health and work, but admitted that a sense of clock-watching permeates his thinking nowadays. "My good friend Chuck Prophet has this great line: 'As we get older, even the elevator doors seem to close faster,' " Escovedo said with a laugh.
"So there is that sense of a hound dog on our tails."
The native of San Antonio, Texas -- who didn't write a song until he was 30 -- is touring and recording at a pace not unlike the 1970s, '80s and '90s, when he was a member of groups the Nuns, Rank and File, True Believers and Buick MacKane.
With a catalogue that is considered among the best in American roots-rock history, Escovedo looks back on his career with the fondest of memories.
"I enjoy the variety and the scope of the songs. After 11 or 12 albums, there's a lot to draw from -- everything from a song like Real Animal, which is very Detroit, very Stooges-influenced, to something like Rosalie, which was done in a play as a bolero."
That's the beauty of Escovedo. He isn't pinned to a particular style of music, and rarely settles on a single way to render his material on stage. He has toured with a varied bunch of band lineups and is still experimenting with the tour that brings him to Victoria for the first time in a decade on Sunday.
"The thing for us has been [to find] a way to keep playing rock 'n' roll without it becoming the obvious," he said.
In terms of his career choices, Escovedo tends to make things up as he goes along.
When his 2001 masterwork, A Man Under the Influence, earned him some of the best reviews of his career, he took a left turn and released a set of songs and stories that accompanied By the Hand of the Father, a Texas play about the struggles of Mexican-Americans.
A radical pair of albums, Room of Songs, credited to the Alejandro Escovedo String Quartet, and The Boxing Mirror, a dark and brooding album produced by the Velvet Underground's John Cale, followed soon after.
Having worked through his difficult period, one that saw him come out from under his mountain of medical debts, Escovedo struck on a winning streak that is showing no signs of slowing down.
His past three albums, Real Animal (2008), Street Songs of Love (2010) and Big Station (2012) -- handled by longtime David Bowie producer Tony Visconti and co-written with Chuck Prophet -- are considered among the best in Escovedo's rich catalogue.
The Escovedo-Prophet-Visconti union has proven so effective that work has already started on another installment, Escovedo said.
"Making records and writing songs is what it's all about for me. Playing live, I get a lot of enjoyment out of it, but the creation of a song is what's really important to me. I don't see the need to stop. I have so many ideas about what to do, and how to do them."
Escovedo has been performing on and off since 2008 with Bruce Springsteen, one of his longtime idols. The two singer-songwriters, both managed by Jon Landau, first performed together during one of Springsteen's arena concerts, on a rendition of the Escovedo song Always a Friend. They have performed together countless times in the four years since, including a four-song set at this year's Austin Music Awards.
"I really admire the guy," Escovedo said. "He's really amazing. To listen to him speak about America, and what is good and bad in this country, is really fascinating."
