Alejandro Escovedo: Live at Rolling Stone

Singer-songwriter Alejandro Escovedo recently stopped by the Rolling Stone studio with guitarist David Pulkingham to showcase a pair of new songs from his June 29th album Street Songs of Love, "Faith" and opening track "Anchor." Street Songs of Love comes two years after Escovedo's "purely autobiographical" album Real Animal, which like its predecessor The Boxing Mirror examined the Texas rocker's near-death experience and long recovery from hepatitis-C. After the pair of personal albums, Escovedo admits to RS that he was "pretty sick of myself" when he began working on Street Songs and began writing "songs about nothing."

However, "Life takes its course and led me to a direction of writing an album full of love songs, or songs about love," Escovedo tells RS, admitting that the subject has always been a mystery to him. On Street Songs, Escovedo is recharged and refocused after his tumultuous past few years. "Because of my health situation, it was pretty scary, there was two years where I couldn't work. Now, I'm more driven about the songs, about the band... I embraced life in a way I haven't before," Escovedo says.

• 
  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
• 
  MOVIES 'Great Gatsby' Is a Crushing Disappointment
• 
  TV Why You Should Watch 'Happy Endings'
• 
  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter