Review: Alejandro Escovedo at the Iron Horse, Northampton, Mass., Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025
Alejandro Escovedo, center; with Mark Henne, drums; and Scott Danborn, keyboards
Alejandro Escovedo peered around the recently restored/reopened Iron Horse Saturday. He said, “Everything changes” and proved it. He led a new band – he always leads a new band – but in mostly familiar songs. Young Texans drummer Mark Henne and keyboardist Scott Danborn – he played three, one producing thunderous bass – replaced Don Antonio, the Italian band heard on his “The Crossing” album and recent tours.
The new trio’s stripped strong sound rang loud and clear, thanks to road manager/sound engineer Brandon Eggleston. At our balcony table in the packed house, we could feel Danborn’s keyboard bass booming up through our feet while Henne’s four-on-the-floor drum beats – kick and snare, mostly – and feedback blasts from Escovedo’s guitar made exposed skin tingle.
Scott Danborn, left, back to the camera; Alejandro Escovedo, and Mark Henne
Before he played a note, Escovedo set his music in place and time, telling a five-minute immigrant family’s kinetic history from Texas to California and back before launching at a roar into “Wave,” set in his birthplace, San Antonio. A later tune titled “San Antonio Rain” was set in surf-town California, but it made autobiographical sense, hinting at a geographically and culturally divided childhood. What was a displaced guy from a musical family to do but fall in love with punk rock, write songs like a heart’s road-map and sing them like life and death?
At 70, Escovedo’s shows have grown ever more autobiographical over time, so the honeymoon-hurricane valentine “Luna de Miel” (“honeymoon”) combined romance with a very real disaster threat both in his affectionate intro-dedication to wife Nancy and daredevil performance. He reached back to his second album “Thirteen Years” (1993) for his earliest tune Saturday; but everything shared consistently powerful sound and complete investment in the bone-deep songs.
The band played tight and dynamic after weeks on the road (Bearsville Theatre Thursday, Stone Mountain in Maine Friday). Everybody sang, and pretty well, while Danborn worked high and low, left hand on the bass-tuned keyboard, his right sculpting melodies in piano, electric piano and organ sonic colors.
Alejandro Escovedo, top; and Scott Danborn, below
The stop-and-go cadence in “Break This Time” hit with breathtaking precision as Escovedo, warmed up by his big guitar break in “Sometimes,” chainsawed through the chorus. Danborn put some Texas tang on it, echoing the curly organ break in “96 Tears.”
Keyboard power also punched up the plaintive “Baby’s Got New Plans,” igniting a unified riff rush.
Things grew quiet(er) when Escovedo swapped to an acoustic guitar and launched a slow, soft intro to “Dear Head On the Wall;” he paused to describe it as concerning taxidermy and Buddhism, but then rocked it anyway, bass booming.
“Something Blue” from the Don Antonio “The Crossing” sessions traced a similar dynamic from wistful musings to assertive keyboard blitz; so did “San Antonio Rain” and the dramatic doom-struck very New York “Down in the Bowery.”
Mark Henne, left; and Alejandro Escovedo
Grabbing his electric guitar signaled a return to all out rock and roll force, as in the early songs, but bigger, fiercer as guitar feedback over a menacing keyboard drone built “Sally Was a Cop” into a mournful explosion of violence. Its peak left listeners too stunned to clap, so Escovedo guided the mood into a singalong.
This peaceful respite proved temporary as Escovedo revved the band, the place, and everybody with uptempo flat-out favorites that did what they always do – including a thrilling departure-less encore of “Always A Friend” and “Castanets.”
Folk Style Opener
Chris Gruen, right; and Paul Casanova
Vermont singer-songwriter Chris Gruen – yes, son of rock photographer Bob Gruen – set a quiet, thoughtful mood in a gentle, lyrically smart opener. He strummed or picked an acoustic six-string alongside electric guitarist Paul Casanova, a master of subtle and beautiful coloration whose delicate lyricism echoed the late great Jesse Ed Davis who, in a post-set conversation, he said he’d never heard of.
Paul Casanova
He didn’t have to; his playing was as original as it was lovely, spicing and spacing well-made songs including “Water Into Wine,” “When She Says,” “Heaven on a Car Ride” and “Mothers in the World.”
Chris Gruen
Alejandro Escovedo Set List
(I maybe missed a title or two near the end, swept away. Titles are listed with their source albums.)
Wave – By The Hand of the Father (2002) A Man Under the Influence (2001)
Sometimes – With These Hands (1996)
Break This Time – The Boxing Mirror (2006)
Luna de Miel – Burn Something Beautiful (2016)
Baby’s Got New Plans – 13 Years (1993)
Dear Head on the Wall – The Boxing Mirror (2006)
Something Blue – The Crossing (2018)
San Antonio Rain – Big Station (2012 – Chuck Prophet co-write)
Down in the Bowery – Street Songs of Love (2010)
Sally Was a Cop – Big Station (2012 – Chuck Prophet co-write; also on Live From Norfolk Street album, 2022)
Put You Down – With These Hands (1996)
Always a Friend – Real Animal (2008)
Castanets – A Man Under the Influence (2001)
BACK PAGES
Two hours, door to door, from my Schenectady home to the Iron Horse
Taste of Northampton, a two-day afternoon food festival in downtown Northampton’s Armory Street Parking Lot off Main Street, packed dozens of food and beverage tent-booths and hundreds of diners into a happily clamorous and aromatic gathering. Eateries in that town of good restaurants pared down their menus for efficient prep and service. Live music, mostly Latin and/or soul, was OK, but unnecessary with Alejandro Escovedo on the Iron Horse menu.
I don’t know if he recognized me, passing close from the downstairs green room through the crowd to the stage where I lurked to photograph. But he fist-bumped me, like in Albany at The Egg, like at the Cohoes Music Hall (playing solo); like at Revolution Hall (big band) the same week the Stones played the Pepsi Arena after Charlie’s cancer scare, like back at the hotel after playing Chickie Wah-Wah in New Orleans.
Before the show
Opener Chris Gruen, left; and Paul Casanova
Escovedo’s set list from Friday at Stone Mountain. Though this was set on the stage, he detoured away early in the Northampton show.
Hoke's Jukebox 