Alejandro Escovedo

Texan troubadour Alejandro Escovedo is the outlaw kind, operating on the edges of rock and roots music, and answering to no one musical master. He's got a rock 'n' roll soul that goes back to his days with the Nuns, one of California's first punk bands, but his twangy side showed itself with alt-country pioneers Rank And File. On his own, the Americana cult hero leaps from the Lou Reed-lost-in-Austin crunch 'n' stomp of "Break This Time" to the hushed acoustic heartbreak of the love-lies-bleeding "Baby's Got New Plans" without scuffing his snakeskin boots. And when the steel guitar swells up behind "Rhapsody's" country-tinged tears of longing and regret, Escovedo's Lone Star roots come rising into view.

In Next Steps, hop on the Escovedo Express bound for everything from cow-punk stampede to Latin percolation.

Alejandro Escovedo's lust for a no-holds-barred musical life has sped him down a path of sharp, hair-raising turns and unexpected detours. The Mexican-American rocker's early days with Rank And File were driven by loco motives like those of the Johnny Cash-meets-Iggy Pop hell-bound train "The Conductor Wore Black." The lunging Latin grooves of "With These Hands" tap into a family history that includes Alejandro's big brothers, Santana percussionists Pete and Coke Escovedo, and sticks-savvy niece, Prince pal Sheila E. And he's never been afraid to let the rough side drag, whether on the bluesy, boozy, Stones-slathered "Guilty" or the grind-and-grunt garage-rock of side-project Buick MacKane's "Queen Anne."

Find out who Escovedo's friends are — hint: he's in tight with the big Boss man — in Deep Cuts.

Decades of dangerous cool and stacks of soul-wracking songs have earned Alejandro Escovedo some heavy friends. When Bruce Springsteen hit Houston on his '08 Magic tour, he brought Escovedo onstage to help him belt out the Texas songsmith's openhearted "Always a Friend." When Ryan Adams was still leading Whiskeytown, he enlisted his hero Escovedo to add his own whiskey-weathered tones to the hell-bent-for-hopelessness "Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight." Of course, Escovedo's art didn't develop in a vacuum, and he respectfully raises his Ray-Bans to his own heroes with a hymn-like acoustic take on the Velvet Underground evergreen "Pale Blue Eyes."

Alejandro Escovedo's got a roots-rock rep your average Americana Joe would trade his battered Telecaster for; when he fell deathly ill, a 2004 benefit album included everyone from Steve Earle to Lucinda Williams. But he's also the guy who opened up for the Sex Pistols in his punk days, got downright arty with John Cale producing, and spat out savage, roughneck rock both on his own and with bands like the True Believers and Buick MacKane. Every side of Escovedo comes into razor-sharp focus right here: the country-lovin' cow-punk, the inward-looking song-poet, the leather-lunged rock 'n' roll animal — they all come alive in songs swiped from every corner of the Escovedo archives.