Austin's Alejandro Escovedo

In 1978, he played in a band that opened for the Sex Pistols during their final concert. Thirty years later, he j ammed onsta ge with Bruce Springsteen. In between, he blazed trails in the nascent cowpunk movement, was christened Artist of the Decade by an alt-country magazine, performed with a string quintet and released at least two of the best albums of the past 20 years.

Oh, yeah, and he almost died.

Austin's Alejandro Escovedo has led many lives in his 30-plus years as a musician. He literally experienced something of a rebirth after hepatitis C nearly killed him in 2003. Finally cleared of the disease in 2005, he poured all the emotions surrounding his near-death experience into his magnum opus, the mystical, genre-bending "The Boxing Mirror."

Now healthy, wise and a bit wealthier than he used to be, Escovedo is touring behind his latest release, "Real Animal," a celebratory work about his life in music. Following a much-deserved two-week vacation in Baja California, Escovedo is launching the next leg of his tour in the Sunshine State, arriving Sunday at the Culture Room. It will be his first appearance in South Florida in about eight years.

"I'm in a really good place," Escovedo says. "I've been playing music since I was 24 in bands traveling across the country. I've played a lot of gigs good and bad, made a lot of great friends and have a beautiful family. It's been good to me. I look back on everything as a really great ride."

That kind of warm ebullience is channeled through every note of "Real Animal," his most consistently upbeat solo album to date. While many artists mellow with age, Escovedo has only re-ignited the punk-rock fire he first lit as a member of The Nuns in 1978. His recent output echoes the unfettered abandon of the Stooges more than anything else.

Indeed, few artists have been able to marry the seemingly disparate genres of punk and country as coherently and effortlessly as has Escovedo. Albums such as 2001's "A Man Under the Influence" and "The Boxing Mirror" come across as multi-instrumental goulashes of Americana, folk, country and rock 'n' roll.

"I just love so many different types of music, and the musicians I play with are capable of playing anything I throw at them," Escovedo says. "I've always said the eclectic quality of my songs and music is because I have a very good record collection."

It helps that Escovedo hails from a terrific music state. His tunes transport the listener to the vastness of the American Southwest, a region that continues to inspire his writing.

"The bulk of my material is influenced by living in the Southwest," he says. "There are spaces here I love very much. It's a wonderful place to meditate on all sorts of subjects and things. And music from Texas always influenced me: Joe Ely, Ornette Coleman, Junior Walker, Arnett Cobb, Lightnin' Hopkins. And then, you've got people like Roky Erickson and the Butthole Surfers. It's an amazing place musically. It lends itself to imagination. You can get lost in the dreamlike quality of it."

Like another Texas songwriter, Daniel Johnston, Escovedo has reaped the benefits of a fiercely loyal coterie of musical kin who have covered his songs and hurled heaps of hosannas his way. When he was suffering with hepatitis without health insurance, a group of musicians banded together to create the fundraising album "Por Vida," which featured the likes of John Cale, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Son Volt and others playing Escovedo's songs.

Then came an opening stint with the Dave Matthews Band, in which Escovedo played arenas for the first time. Matthews personally introduced Escovedo to his audience at each show. And last year, in what would be a pinnacle for any musician, Bruce Springsteen called Escovedo onstage in Houston to perform the"Real Animal" cut "Always a Friend" with the E Street Band.

"I was terrified," he recalls. "Eighteen thousand people is nothing to laugh at to begin with. There was no way I could choke. I was suddenly in this place where I was kind of out of my element. But it was good. I think what was wonderful was seeing Bruce have such a great time playing the song."

There may be no better—or worse—testament to Escovedo's increasingly mass appeal than the fact that even George W. Bush has an Escovedo-penned song ("Castanets") on his iPod. 

The version on Dubya's device was actually a cover by Los Lonely Boys, but the news was enough to cause Escovedo to put a moratorium on the song at live shows until Barack Obama was elected.

"It was embarrassing," he admits. "Had it been some other president, I'm sure it would have meant something. But being who it was, it didn't mean much."

Alejandro Escovedo will perform 8 p.m. Sunday at the Culture Room, 3045 N. Federal Highway, in Fort Lauderdale. Tickets cost $15. The Randall Bramblett Band will open. Call 954-564-1074 or visit Cultureroom.net. Contact John Thomason at jpthomason@tribune.com.