Alejandro’s New Guitar Sings to the Lord

This past warm, humid Tuesday night, Alejandro Escovedo played one of a series of Tuesday-night shows at the Continental Club, accompanied on stage by his Sensitive Boys (although two members of his band, backup singers Karla Manzur and Gina Holton, are not boys at all).

Even after seeing Alejandro play fifteen or twenty times over the past 12 years, in many different venues and cities and band iterations, I still get a rush every time I’m heading to one of his shows. The Continental Club is one of my favorite places to see him: It’s so small that there isn’t a bad spot in the room to see the stage. Tuesday night the band went on nice and early — 10:30 pm — and when the music started, it swarmed into the bones of my chest, its deep vibration making me grin through my end-of-a-long-day tiredness.

Before the band began to play, Alan Fisher, the Continental’s barbecue man, joined them on stage. “Alejandro has a new guitar,” he told the crowd. He talked about Al’s new guitar singing up to the Lord, and I thought about how that’s the best reason I know to go to church — the same reason I’m in a band, myself: to sing together, play instruments together, and feel the Spirit move in ecstatic synchronicity within us all.

Alejandro told the crowd that eating Alan Fisher’s barbecue “makes you feel good”; then drummer Hector Muñoz kicked the band into “Always a Friend.” Aside from Alejandro himself, Hector is my favorite part of the band. He is from El Paso, and his skin shines with sweat as he plays, though he sits calmly on his drum throne, his body almost unmoving, his face a study in concentration and internal stillness while his hands and drumsticks are all in a blur. It’s called economy of motion, and anyone from Texas knows it’s essential to living in this intensity of heat and humidity.

There’s a new album, “Street Songs of Love,” coming out June 29. After that, as Alejandro said, we won’t see the band around these parts for a while, as they head out on tour. Until then, they have several shows in and around Austin, including the next two Tuesday nights at the Continental (May 18 and 25, both at 10:30 pm). Get out and see them while you can.

And if you’re like me and enjoy taking one great musician and using him as a hub, following the spokes out to other great bands, albums and artists, you might want to research Alejandro Escovedo’s music, influences and followers dating back to the ’70s. He was part of the San Francisco punk rock scene back in 1977, when he was one-third of the Nuns. Then he moved to Austin around 1980 and formed Rank and File with brothers Chip and Tony Kinman, who had been the Dils back in San Francisco — another spoke off the hub, and another great punk band. Another spoke: Alejandro’s youngest brother Mario Escovedo, who was the frontman for one of my all-time favorite bands, the Dragons, based in San Diego; I used to go see them play at the Casbah, where I would stand by the bar and feel overwhelmed by the sheer rock-and-roll power. Another spoke: After Rank and File split up in the early ’80s, Alejandro formed the True Believers with another of his brothers, Javier, who had been in the Zeros, another awesome 1970s punk band based down in Chula Vista, near the California-Mexico border. All great bands and musicians. Have fun looking ’em up.

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