When I interviewed Alejandro Escovedo for this episode, we were sitting in the green room upstairs at the Brighton Music Hall in Boston. He’d just spent ten hours on the road from Toronto on the day after Thanksgiving to get there. You can hear the band soundchecking in the background. There is no better setting to talk to a man who has spent nearly forty years traveling the world, playing guitar and singing for audiences of all shapes and size. He was gracious and thoughtful, as his songwriting implies he would be, talking about the stories behind the songs on his latest album, Burn Something Beautiful (you can read the DoT review here).

For those unfamiliar with his work, he’s a bit of a rock and roll chimera. Depending on which song you pick from his extensive catalogue, he could be an Americana troubadour or a glam rocker, a Texas singer/songwriter or a punk. He tells stories, and sometimes that’s done with pounding drums and guitars feeding back.

Escovedo says at one point that music saved his life. It’s a life-sustaining enterprise, and it has brought him through personal tragedy and illness, including his battle with Hepatitis C, which he is close to winning for good. We touched on that briefly, but he referenced a story from the Dallas Observer that expands on that. It was wonderful to dig into the music, the different bands he’s toured with, and what all of this means to him.

After the interview, listen to “Thought I’d Let You Know,” the closing song on Burn Something Beautiful.