Escovedo's passion for music triumphs over illness

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Posted on Mon, Mar. 07, 2005

Escovedo's passion for music triumphs over illness

BY DANIEL RUBIN

Philadelphia Inquirer

Ten minutes to curtain time, Escovedo was folded like a

pocketknife, throwing up blood in a Tempe, Ariz., dressing room.

He finished the show - a musical based on his father's life - then

collapsed. The talk in the emergency room was of shunts and liver transplants.

" I was very confused, scared, " the genre-defying singer-songwriter recalls

of that night nearly two years ago. " I remember hearing the nurse, `If we don't

do something quick, we're going to lose him.' "

Then he passed out - " went somewhere else, " he puts it.

And the condition he had lived with since 1996, diagnosed as hepatitis C,

had taken the wheel.

Since that episode, the Texas troubadour has been to the edge and back.

For months after he was stricken, Escovedo would toss in bed, battling

both sickness and the treatment, a battering combination of interferon and

ribavirin that turned his muscles into putty. He couldn't sleep. He lost his

hair. His skin felt as if it were on fire.

He wasn't sure if the drugs had made him dark and depressed, or if he was

meeting some new part of himself. Without health insurance, he was beat

financially. He wondered if he'd ever want to pick up his guitar again.

" I was completely unmoored, " he says. " I had no anchor whatsoever. The

thing that I had done every day of my life - play music - I did not enjoy.

Playing wasn't something I had done for a living. It was my life. "

How music has become his life once again was Escovedo's passion in a

recent phone interview from his creekside home in the Texas hills between Austin

and San . His voice was soft, his words unflinching. The man whose moving

songs have found places in punk bands, guitar assaults and chamber ensembles is

an unvarnished storyteller - modest, soulful, serious.

" I had been doing the same thing for a long time, " says Escovedo, 54,

whose first band, the Nuns, opened for the Sex Pistols in 1978. " I hadn't sat

still. I have had time to sit and look at everything I've done and maybe where I

was going to go - if I took care of myself. "

He credits a new, holistic approach for his current good health. He

replaced the drug battery with a trial-and-error treatment that includes

vitamins, sessions with a Buddhist therapist, yoga, meditation, acupuncture and

a few prescription pills. He no longer drinks. The will to play and write has

returned.

But some things, such as the way he tours, must change. No more will he

spend five straight months on buses, as he did with the True Believers, his

three-guitar posse from the 1980s.

The father of six daughters and one son will go out one weekend a month to

start. He began in Chicago last month, with sold-out shows the Chicago Tribune

called a " triumph. " Next it's Washington, polis, Md., and Philadelphia. For

this leg, he's traveling with cellists Matt Fish and Standefer, violinist

Voelz and acoustic guitarist Pulkingham. Seattle follows next month,

then shows in North Carolina and a Birmingham, Ala., festival, where he'll play

with Loretta Lynn.

" I just changed my whole, not only, attitude, but philosophy of performing

and going out, " he says. " I don't want to be on the road anymore. "

The illness helped Escovedo appreciate slowing down. " The fact that I've

watched my (2-year-old) daughter grow up the first couple of years is a

blessing. And I'm much closer to my older children. I've witnessed the support

of so many friends. I think I've found a different sense of focus inside me. "

Those friends staged benefits for him across the country, raising money to

pay for medicine that cost him $3,000 a month. Yet friends gave him more than

money. He credits them with giving him back his music.

Some of the rock heroes from his youth recorded last year's " Por Vida: A

Tribute to the Songs of Escovedo. " The first cover to arrive was a

version of " She Doesn't Live Here Anymore " by Cale, who cofounded the

Velvet Underground - which Escovedo describes as " my favorite band of all time. "

Next in was " One More Time " from Ian Hunter, who was lead singer of Mott the

Hoople.

Alt-country kin such as Lucinda , Steve Earle, Son Volt and the

Jayhawks contributed. So did his older brother Pete Escovedo, a Santana veteran,

and niece Sheila E., who was Prince's percussionist in the '80s.

Part of the proceeds went to the Escovedo Medical & Living

Expense Fund. Another portion benefited an assistance program for other

musicians with hepatitis C.

" Suddenly, I was lifted in a way, " he says. " It brought back all that I

loved about music. I needed it. "

Lenny Kaye, the music writer and guitarist with Patti , says it's

rare to find someone who " can rock as hard as and also wear his heart

on his sleeve. "

Kaye, who covered Escovedo's " Sacramento & Polk " for the tribute album,

traveled to Austin in November to participate in the benefit for Escovedo.

" At the end, " Kaye says, " it was so great to see windmilling at

his electric guitar and full of energy and so happy to be where he belongs: in

front of an audience singing his songs. "

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