Alejandro Escovedo Sharpens Songwriting Skills at Hometown Shows

For as much time as Alejandro Escovedo spends on the road -- he's played 300 shows some years -- developing an entire album onstage was something he had never done before honing tunes for his latest, 'Street Songs of Love,' in front of an audience. Starting last fall, Escovedo and his band played a weekly string of hometown gigs in Austin, Texas, where the album began taking shape.

"When we started the series of shows at the Continental Club, I knew right away that these songs were working," Escovedo tells Spinner. "They just felt good. The audience felt good. It was exciting. All of us were inspired: the audience was inspired, the band was. The audience kept growing every week, word got out as to what we were doing and it became a collective work in progress."

The first show included a batch of songs Escovedo had written with his friend Chuck Prophet, and other tunes evolved from week to week.

"They were becoming sharper," Escovedo says. "Some of them were expanding, and then we'd take it back to zero again and start it over. Some of them stuck from the very beginning, like 'Tula.' 'Anchor' pretty much stayed right where it was. 'Meteor Shower' is so simple that there was really no place we could take that song. It was just perfect in its entirety right there, but others developed."

In fact, they developed quickly enough that Escovedo didn't have time to get stuck on any of the songs as he was writing them. That was enough to convince him the endeavor is worth repeating.

"I'd like to do the next one the same way," he says. "It made writing a lot easier for me. I didn't have the time to sit there and monkey-mind myself to death to the point where you're really just completely paralyzed. I didn't give myself the opportunity."

'Street Songs of Love' is out now on Fantasy Records.