TIM HUGHES talks to legendary rock-poet Alejandro Escovedo about the highs and lows of his long career.

PUNK-rocker turned country troubador Alejandro Escovedo is a man whose time has surely come.

Long respected as one of North America’s greatest rock-poets and cited by the great and good as an influence on their work, Alejandro the Texan guitar-bashing street-poet is an esoteric figure, remaining largely a star of the underground.

His career has gone through soaring highs and terrifying lows. Yet with his 10th solo album Street Songs of Love, out next week on Fantasy/Concord Music, he has released his opus.

And true to form, it comes with celebrity endorsement – collaborations from Bruce Springsteen and Mott the Hoople frontman Ian Hunter.

“It ended up being an album about love, the pursuit of a feeling that is forever elusive, mysterious and addictive,” he says in typically florid style.

Produced by Tony Visconti (T. Rex, David Bowie, U2, Morrissey) the record is a genre-leaping emotional rollercoaster, sweeping from despair and rage to celebration, cut through with his powerful voice.

“You just do your good work, and people care,” he goes on.

“I always believed, when I was a kid, that if you worked hard, you would find fulfillment. I think I got a lot of that from my father and brothers.”

One person who has noticed him, to his chagrin, is fellow Texan George W Bush, who lists Alejandro’s song Castanets as one of his favourites.

“Believe me I’m not proud of that,” Alejandro says.

Born in San Antonio to Mexican parents, Alejandro emerged in the 1970s on San Francisco’s punk scene as guitarist in the Nuns; before tempering that bombast with Americana in Rank & File, then heading to Austin, Texas, to experiment with more disparate rock with the True Believers.

But it was as a solo artist, starting in 1992 with album Gravity, that he hit his stride. So where does it all come from?

“I had a good record collection,” he says. “I grew up in a family of 12 kids. My brothers were jazzers, into Latin jazz and Cuban and Puerto Rican percussion. Both my mother and father loved Mexican trio music – vocal bands playing beautiful romantic ballads in three-part harmony. And I had a cousin who lived with us and who turned me on to Elvis, Chuck Berry and the Big Bopper.

“In 1957 we moved from Texas, where I’d heard the beginnings of rock, and country, and the blues a little bit, because it was around, and we went to California. It was there I got exposed to the wealth of surf music, and Ike and Tina Turner, James Brown.

“My cousins would sneak us into dances when we were young, and we’d watch the dancers. I got caught up in that, and the Anglophile thing.

“All those garage bands who listened to the English groups and turned it into something new.

“When I began to come of age, and was able to play the music, it became like a religion to me. We were fortunate that radio at that time had no boundaries. It was all brand new. No one knew you couldn’t play Marvin Gaye, and then Captain Beefheart, and then Sun Ra. It was all great, and to me, it all made sense.”

And punk made an impact on the young Alejandro. “The beautiful thing about punk rock to me was it was all mix-and-match,” he says. “We would have shows where a reggae star like Max Romeo would play with a rockabilly guy like Ray Campi, and then be followed by the in-your-face blast of Crime.”

Riding high at the start of the decade, things went badly wrong for Alejandro, 59, when was struck down with Hepatitis C and nearly died.

His long, slow recovery took him off the road and left him facing steep medical bills.

The response came from many of those musicians he had influenced – including John Cale, Los Lonely Boys, Calexico, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Howe Gelb, Ian Hunter and the Jayhawks – as well as family members, who released a benefit album of Alejandro covers.

He fought back and, with John Cale at the helm of production, released The Boxing Mirror in 2006.

It was, he admits, a cathartic experience. “I had to make that record,” he says. “It was uncomfortable to play, and even now, we don’t perform a lot of the songs off it.”

Tonight Alejandro plays Oxford’s Bullingdon, in Cowley Road. The gig will feature material spanning his career, but focusing on the new album – created, as ever, with input from his backing group Sensitive Boys, who have been with him for 20 years. “I love my band,” he says. “Without them I’d feel very alone.”

Alejandro Escovedo plays the Bullingdon, Cowley Road, Oxford tonight.