Life guided Pete Escovedo to successful music journey

Renowned percussionist Pete Escovedo wasn’t always interested in the instruments that he rose to fame playing.

“I wanted to be a sax player,” he said during a recent telephone interview. “The only thing is that I was never any good.”

Escovedo, who has been performing his blend of smooth jazz, Latin jazz and salsa for more than 50 years, will perform Saturday, June 8 at Thornton Winery with his daughter, Sheila E. and Marcus Anderson as part of the 2017 Champagne Jazz Concert Series.

“It’s funny how life takes turns and how it actually puts you on the road to what you should do,” he said. “I was in high school learning the sax and I heard piano player Ed Kelly and he was starting up a group and he wanted to do a small band to do school functions and just play wherever he could. I heard he was looking for a sax player, and I told him I play the sax and wanted to audition, but he had hired one already.”

But he was adaptable if anything.

“He said, ‘You know I’ve been thinking of going into some Latin jazz sounds’ and I told him I could do it,” he said. “I used to beat on coffee cans and had a big collection of music so he hired me. I put the sax in mothballs and that’s been it.”

He had grown up around all kinds of music.

“I was brought up in the Bay Area, and musically there was a lot of people there from different styles of music and we were all around the Santana and Tower of Power days,” he said. “You had them and the Grateful Dead and Journey and we all knew each other and played with each other and those kinds of music and styles stayed with mover the years when I formed my own band.”

One particular influence was Tito Puente.

“I looked up to him and we played the same instrument and they called him the king of that instrument,” he said. “I kind of styled my playing like his after watching him for so many years and playing with him a lot. It was a long association and something I always cherished.”

Like most musicians, there has always been a massive attraction to being able to play.

“It’s such a great thing to learn how to play music, but you don’t have to be great musician to really get what it is all about,” he said. “You can just be able to strum the guitar a little, hit the drums some but it is always fun and a good way to release tensions. You can have a hard day at work, pick up your instrument and just feel better. You also can appreciate why a performer is up on stage and see how they have spent their life learning their craft.”

Of course, he gets to experience a special feeling when he is on the stage.

“It’s like another level of you takes place,” he said. “There’s a magic of it and an excitement and even if there’s still that anxious feeling as well, it is a way to test yourself. Your emotions hit you but it is always one of the best feelings of the world. You just hope the audience appreciates it and doesn’t boo you off the stage!”

He laughs when he points out perhaps the worst performance of his career when everything went wrong.

“I can remember a time we played in Italy in Venice, and to this day it was the worst gig we ever played in our lives,” he said. “The PA was the worst. The guitar player’s amp went out, the guy who was doing sound was Italian and the language barrier was an issue. The bass sound boomed through the whole building, and at some point we had to stop and try to fix it, but it never got fixed.”

Stories like that are part of a new project he has just completed – his autobiography.

“My main purpose of the book was to talk about my family,” he said. “I came from a broken family, and we were all born on the wrong side of tracks. There were a lot of bad times that people don’t know about. So, I wanted to make sure my family know who their grandfather or great-grandfather is and went through to show just how important family is in life.”

It’s also, of course, for his fans.

“Everyone has a story in life, whether it was how you made a million dollars or something that impacted you when you were young,” he said. “I think it’s an interesting read.”

Of course, he will share the stage with his famous daughter, Sheila E.

“It’s so much fun to be able to look at each other when we are stage,” he said. “She and I did a performance at the White House for President Obama, and afterwards we spoke with him and the first lady and we had a great time. When we left I said to Sheila, ‘Do you realize that we just left the president of the United States and there have been times in the early days where we wondered if we would have enough money to pay the band or even get a hamburger to eat?’ That’s what it is all about.”