{"id":742002,"date":"2026-04-21T01:24:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T01:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/742002\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T01:24:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T01:24:15","slug":"interview-alejandro-escovedo-is-headlining-adams-ave-unplugged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/742002\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Alejandro Escovedo is headlining Adams Ave Unplugged"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Alejandro<\/a>Alejandro Escovedo perform at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2014. (Photo by Barry Brecheisen\/Invision\/AP)<\/p>\n

Born in San Antonio in 1951 to a Mexican father and a Texan mother, Alejandro Escovedo moved with his family to Orange County when he was seven years old. The family eventually ended up in Chula Vista, giving Escovedo lifelong San Diego ties. In the 1980s he moved back to Texas and has been there ever since, mostly in the Austin area.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Formative years in the 1970s and \u201980s with punk band the Nuns, cowpunk pioneers Rank and File, and fiery roots-rockers the True Believers prepared him for a solo career that began with 1992\u2019s acclaimed \u201cGravity.\u201d More than a dozen albums have followed, documenting Escovedo\u2019s eclectic musical range from singer-songwriter to glam-rocker to Americana trailblazer<\/a> to chamber-folk innovator and beyond.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On April 25, he returns to San Diego to play the headlining slot at the Adams Avenue Unplugged festival<\/a>. Escovedo is a huge fan of last year\u2019s headliner, legendary British musician Terry Reid, so he said it was an honor when the festival approached him to be this year\u2019s featured act. <\/p>\n

For the latest installment of our \u201cFive Questions\u201d series<\/a>, we spoke with Escovedo about his San Diego connections and memories, his plans for an eventful 2026, and the recent passing of his True Believers bandmate Jon Dee Graham.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I understand you\u2019re playing solo acoustic for the Adams Avenue Unplugged headlining show at Normal Heights United Church. How often do you play solo shows, and do you stick to more acoustic material or do you adapt noisier band songs to the solo format?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I do a solo tour of a couple weeks every year. I\u2019ve been doing 90 minutes. A lot of it is storytelling. Some of it has to do with whatever songs might be on my mind that day. I do everything. I\u2019ve done \u201cCastanets,\u201d I\u2019ve done \u201cChelsea Hotel,\u201d I do \u201cEverybody Loves Me.\u201d I have even done \u201cSacramento & Polk\u201d (one of Escovedo\u2019s edgiest rockers) in my solo show. I do this kind of noir version of it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been wondering if playing Adams Avenue Unplugged has rekindled memories of your appearances at San Diego\u2019s (now-defunct) Street Scene Festival in the 1990s. What do you remember about those gigs, or perhaps shows at other venues in the area?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I used to do Street Scene a lot with the band. In fact, \u201cMore Miles Than Money,\u201d (1997) the live record, has a version of (the Rolling Stones\u2019) \u201cSway\u201d from Street Scene. One of the cool things about the festival was that I got to see Jeremy Spencer from Fleetwood Mac. He was just doing all these covers, like \u201cJohnny B. Goode\u201d and stuff. But I loved his guitar playing, so it was cool to see him.<\/p>\n

That was a great festival. I just loved it. I saw a lot of great bands, and a lot of my friends played it \u2013 Los Lobos, the Paladins, the Blasters \u2013 so it was always cool to see everybody. But I got to see a lot of things I\u2019d never seen before, which was great too. They took good care of us, and they put us up in a hotel.<\/p>\n

I did some shows with Los Lobos at Humphrey\u2019s. There was another club that we used to play \u2014 I think it was called the Spirit Club. Rank and File played there, and the True Believers too. But most of my memories are of the Casbah and the Belly Up. Those two places were very instrumental in my gigging career, early on. (Those bonds continue; Escovedo played the Belly Up in July 2024 and the Casbah in October 2025.)<\/p>\n

Can you tell me about your years growing up in Orange County and San Diego, and do you still have family members here?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most of them have moved away. Javier (Alejandro\u2019s True Believers bandmate) still lives down there. My sister Dolly moved to Menifee, and my sister Cookie moved up closer to Costa Mesa. So I think Javier is the only one left. Mario (frontman for rock band the Dragons) moved to Connecticut; he\u2019s working for ESPN over there.<\/p>\n

When our family moved from San Antonio to Southern California (in the late 1950s), we lived in Huntington Beach. I used to surf down in San Diego all the time. We surfed Trestles, and Ocean Beach, and Swamis, and Torrey Pines, and La Jolla, and Black\u2019s \u2014 all these great surf spots down there. So I was always down there, and going down to Mexico. My family loved Rosarito Beach in Baja, so we were always traveling through San Diego.<\/p>\n

When my youngest brother Mario had some sort of lung issues, my parents wanted to get to an even more mild environment. So they moved down to Chula Vista. I did not move with them, because I was out of the house at 15, but they moved \u2014 all my brothers and sisters and my mom and dad. So I was down there all the time. Actually, before all that happened, my dad and I got kicked out of the house at the same time. I was 15, so my dad and I lived in National City for a year. I went to school at Sweetwater High for a while. It was a lonely year; I couldn\u2019t wait to get back to Huntington Beach and my friends.<\/p>\n

When the Nuns happened (in the mid-1970s), I made friends with Tony and Chip Kinman, who became Rank and File. They lived in Carlsbad, so I was down there all the time. Their father was the commandant at the Army and Navy Academy.<\/p>\n

Your last album, Echo Dancing, came out in 2024. Are you working on a new one yet, and do you have other plans for the rest of 2026?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, we just released a live record. We did three nights at the Continental Club (in Austin). It\u2019s called \u201cSouth Congress Serenade,\u201d and it\u2019s with the Electric Saints (keyboardist Scott Danbom and drummer Mark Henne), plus James Mastro played with us on that gig. I think I\u2019m going to bring some of the live record to sell (in San Diego).<\/p>\n

I just finished a record called \u201cMy Ego Broke My Fall,\u201d which will be out October 2 on Yep Roc. It was produced by Britt Daniel (of Spoon) and Charlie Sexton, with the Electric Saints. And I\u2019m going to Majorca in May to make a record with Sami Yaffa, who was in Hanoi Rocks and the New York Dolls. He also had a wonderful travel music program from Finland called Sound Tracker. It\u2019s kind of like Anthony Bourdain, but music. It\u2019s really great.<\/p>\n

In August, I\u2019m going to Hawaii for the first time. I\u2019m doing a show on Maui with Los Lobos. They asked me to come and do six songs with them. And then I fly over to Honolulu for two nights with the Electric Saints.<\/p>\n

You lost a longtime friend and a very important former bandmate in late March when True Believers guitarist Jon Dee Graham died at age 67 after a series of illnesses. Do you have any thoughts to share about him?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was really surprised by how hard it hit me. It shook me up in a way I wasn\u2019t expecting. When we played the Continental (in early April), I spoke a lot about John Dee and our relationship, and about the True Believers. The encore was \u201cRebel Kind\u201d and \u201cOne Moment to Another\u201d (the latter a song Graham wrote). It was really beautiful. We had everyone singing \u201cOne Moment to Another\u201d in the audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was really a special night. I think everyone came not just to see our show, but to remember John too. I was signing records afterward, because we had our new live record, and everybody said such nice things about John and the True Believers. People who had seen shows back then were showing me photographs that they had from the old days.<\/p>\n

I might do \u201cOne Moment to Another\u201d in San Diego. It\u2019s a beautiful song. Jon Dee told me that words are from a peyote prayer, or some sort of indigenous prayer. The True Believers did a great version of it. The other song of his that I loved playing was \u201cSleep Enough To Dream.\u201d I heard those True Believers records again recently, and they still sound pretty good. We had a good thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alejandro Escovedo perform at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2014. (Photo by Barry Brecheisen\/Invision\/AP) Born…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":742003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,305942,975,24496,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-742002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-america","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-five-questions","tag-music","tag-music-festivals","tag-san-diego","tag-sandiego","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116440089665009113","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}