Regrets, he’s had a few, and most of them are chronicled in Alejandro Escovedo’s bruised, beautiful, unsettling songs.
But after the disappointments, the triumphs are all the sweeter, and Friday provided one of those occasions. In the kickoff to a weekend full of sold-out Chicago performances, Escovedo brought a six-piece backing back to FitzGerald’s for his first local concert in two years.
In the interim, the singer-songwriter had been waging a life-and-death battle with hepatitis C. Now healthy enough to venture outside his home state of Texas for some shows, it was only fitting that he landed at the Berwyn road house. During the encore, he recalled his first Chicago solo show at the same club in 1992, a night made even more memorable by a storm-tossed power outage.
“I’ll never forget that night, I’ll never forget this club and I’ll never forget you,” he said.
It was about as sentimental as the proceedings got for the soft-spoken troubadour, who still cuts a dashing figure in black. Though his metier is the song, his music doesn’t belong in a coffeehouse. Instead, it’s the stuff of a bar band well-versed in bringing a party to life, but even better in winding it down after-hours. Escovedo and his crew would’ve fit nicely in the early ’70s, playing smart, savage rock ‘n’ roll in the mold of Mott the Hoople, the Faces and the “Sticky Fingers”-era Rolling Stones. All the promise that those bands once held sustains Escovedo, and his personal songs are filtered through music that swings from orchestral pop to Stooges stomp.
Susan Voelz’s violin and Brian Standefer’s cello provided an eerie backdrop for the early acoustic songs, tales of wanderers, fathers, husbands, lovers and the messes they leave behind. After the poignancy of “Wave,” the electric guitars surfaced and Jon Dee Graham’s lap steel played the whipping-post blues. Strings sawed and guitars crashed into “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” in which Bartok shakes hands with Iggy Pop. Escovedo’s been performing this song in this way for years, but it was great to see him strap on the full-metal jacket again.
Escovedo broke out a few new songs, including the bittersweet “Deer Head on the Wall,” in which the strings tugged him down and then nudged him along. There was the trap-door that opened up in the middle of “I Was Drunk,” and enfolded the singer in chaos, a musical snapshot of the song’s narrator coming unglued.
“Castanets” ended in a whirl of windmill chords, and the encore redeemed Rod Stewart’s “Hot Legs,” reimagining the song as the Faces might’ve performed it while bearing down on closing time. On “Gravity/Falling Down Again,” the bone-weary chuckle that is the song’s refrain was not quite as rueful. It was a defiant laugh, and Escovedo’s right hand became a blur as he slashed at the guitar strings. It was a laugh that suggested this was the best possible way to come back: surrounded by friends and feedback.
