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Fans who turned out last January to see singer-songwriter Alejandro Escovedo perform at the WDVX-FM live radio show "Tennessee Shines" were blown away when he took the stage.

Part of a bill that included several other artists, Escovedo and his three bandmates only played a few songs, but those who expected a sedate set of Americana came away with their ears ringing.

Escovedo, it seems, has -- for the time being -- traded in the contemplative sounds of his extensive back catalog for a wall of ferocity, a towering wave of loud guitar that serves to celebrate life. Given his well-documented battle with Hepatitis-C, which nearly cost him his life, Escovedo has gone back to his punk roots, and his most recent studio album -- "Real Animal" -- as well as the follow-up slated to be released in late June, is anchored in noise.

It's a reinvention, of sorts, and one that's ongoing, Escovedo told The Daily Times during a recent phone interview.

"This songwriter thing has been liberating, because you don't have to hide everything," he said. "You take on so many characters and voices in a song to say what you can't say in real life sometimes, and it's kind of freeing to just say it -- that love is beautiful and freeing and is a mess and is (messed) up. I just want to be able to have that sense of freedom, and I don't know I've always had it in my life because of the different ways I've dealt with it, some of them not always so healthy.

"I don't think of myself as a musician, but I love writing songs. I love the way they communicate and encompass so much, and the soundtrack to those images is so beautiful. Plus, the reaction is immediate -- we're lucky in that respect. We're not like painters who sit in studios by themselves; we're fortunate in that way."

Casual fans and those who had never heard of Escovedo before last year's "Tennessee Shines" show may have come away complaining about the volume of his set, but those who have followed his career for the past couple of decades are more than aware that, when provoked or inspired, he can make a rock 'n' roll racket with the best of them. He's viewed as an icon in many roots-rock circles, a singer-songwriter who got his start in the San Francisco punk scene of the 1970s as a member of The Nuns.

In the early 1980s, he moved to New York and co-founded the band Rank and File, a group whose blend of country and punk was an early hallmark of what would eventually become known as alternative-country. After Rank and File relocated to Austin, Texas, Escovedo would form the True Believers with his brother, Javier, before embarking on a solo career.

On albums such as "Gravity," "Thirteen Years," "With These Hands" and "A Man Under the Influence," he inspired countless singer-songwriters who followed in his wake and earned a dedicated following of Americana fans as well. At the height of his creative success -- a composition called "By the Hand of the Father," about his own dad and produced in conjunction with a Los Angeles theater company -- he was struck down, however.

Collapsing after a performance, he was diagnosed with Hepatitis-C. The disease was so advanced that he had esophageal varices, advanced cirrhosis of the liver and abdominal tumors. He was first diagnosed in 1996, and while he doesn't know when or how he contracted the disease, he attributes it to the hedonistic lifestyle he lived during the 1970s. His health took a backseat to his lifestyle even after the diagnosis, however -- until he found himself fighting for his life.

Slowly, he won that fight, and in 2005, he was given the all-clear from his physicians. During his illness, his music was given a high-profile salute by such artists as Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Son Volt and The Jayhawks, who came together to record "Por Vida: A Tribute to the Songs of Alejandro Escovedo," the proceeds of which went to help defray Escovedo's medical bills.

After his recovery, he released the brooding CD "The Boxing Mirror," but on "Real Animal," his brush with death took a backseat for the gratitude that came with survival. His struggle, however, has had a profound impact on his creativity, he added -- it's been almost five years since his viral load was too low to detect, but the experience itself won't diminish any time soon.

"It's funny how that stuff affects me -- in how I reflect on the past and in how I realize that I lost a lot of my dearest friends, my brothers and sisters, to addiction," he said. "It all comes from this need to find some sort of warmth that we're all looking for. Drugs numb you to what's happening around you, and some of them enhance what's happening around you, and all of those things kind of still play in how I perceive what's happening around me. I'm not trying to medicate what I'm feeling anymore, but what my past has certainly given me a lifestyle that's not average."

In the wake of releasing "Real Animal" and the enthusiastic support of it through a lot of touring, Escovedo has found himself facing new challenges, however. Life on the road has taken its toll on his marriage, and in ruminating on the themes that might populate the to-be-titled follow-up, he kept coming back to the idea of finding balance.

It's an ephemeral concept, he said -- maintaining a relationship with a wife on the homefront and with fans around the country ... with a hedonistic, rebellious past and a more cautious present ... with a reputation as a certain kind of artist and a desire to push past those boundaries into unexplored territory.

"In the last year, I've worked really hard on 'Real Animal,' and it was a beautiful year for that record, but it definitely had its toll on my relationship with my wife," he said. "We're trying to figure out how to create a relationship that's different but fits what we both want. We're both artists and we have a child together. On the one hand, it's a hell of a lot of work, but the payoff is that we have a beautiful child who brings so much to our lives, and we don't want to throw everything away. So we're trying to work really hard on that, and in a sense a lot of the new songs are about that."

After the autobiographical nature of "Real Animal," Escovedo said, he wanted to focus more on experiences he's living in the present rather than revisiting the ghosts of the past. As he retreated to Mexico with long-time friend, co-writer and fellow artist Chuck Prophet, Escovedo found himself thinking about his life's journey -- about looking around and taking stock of his place on that path in the here and now, and looking ahead to where it might lead.

"I did some surfing, and Chuck came out and we wrote some songs that became the beginning of this new album," he said. "I remember Chuck asking me, 'What's on your mind?' And I said, 'I know that romance is futile, and the art of surfing.' So we took it from there, and it is contemplative to a certain extent.

"There's a song on there called 'Down in the Valley' that I wrote for my son, and it's kind of like passing on this idea, this lifestyle, to someone younger than you. It's telling my son just to go for it, man -- to be a freak, to be wild, to be a revolutionary ... to be anything but complacent and normal and mediocre. It's telling him to go out with a bang and make a big noise."

Other new songs -- some of which will be showcased at Escovedo's Tuesday night show at The Bijou Theatre in downtown Knoxville -- include "Meteor Shower" ("It's kind of a meditation on a woman's beauty," he said) and "This Bed Is Getting Crowded," about the baggage both parties bring to a relationship and how each person reacts to it.

"If it is contemplative, it's going to be presented in a state that's really joyful," he said of the forthcoming album. "That's what we're really into on this record. I think it's important to do that, to touch on a thing that may seem simple and trite. Because to get in there and touch on this prism of the world, it's pretty complicated. There are a lot of ways to approach it, and a lot of answers."