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UC Davis' SummerMusic series is set to open Thursday, July 9, with a concert by Alejandro Escovedo, the former country-punk rocker who moved on to a solo career for which he has earned praise as a passionate, literate, hard-rocking storyteller.

The summer series, free and open to the public, comprises three concerts on the Quad—July 9, July 25 and Aug. 14—presented by the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts and sponsored by Summer Sessions.

All shows start at 7:30 p.m., with the Quad opening for picnics at 6:30 p.m. Alcoholic beverages are not permitted.

In June, Spin magazine named Escovedo as “Best Rock ’n’ Roll Animal (With Strings!)” at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn. “Through it all, he bared his heart and scars with equal aplomb, and with a feedback-drenched, dual-guitar attack that evoked the noisy glories of Lou Reed’s classic Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal,” ���辱��’s correspondent wrote. Escovedo’s latest album, in fact, is titled Real Animal, featuring “Always a Friend,” “Sister Lost Soul” and “Nuns Song.”

He is due to perform here with an acoustic trio.

Escovedo was a founding member of the pioneering San Francisco-based punk band The Nuns in the mid-1970s. He moved on to the bands Rank & File and True Believers, helping to forge the country-punk sound that became known as alternative country.

Escovedo's Gravity (1992) launched his solo career. Among his subsequent albums: Thirteen Years (1993), With These Hands (1996), More Miles Than Money: Live 1994-1996 (1998), Bourbonitis Blues (1999), A Man Under the Influence (2001) and The Boxing Mirror (2006).

His Web site describes 2008's Real Animal as “a collective journey through Escovedo’s various musical incarnations from punk rock to string quintets, and ... as introspective as it is retrospective. Recalling the people, places and influences that helped shape his career, Real Animal represents the primitive aspect of Escovedo’s music — the instinct, the urgency and a survivor mentality that fuels his musical passion.

Listen: .

The other performers in SummerMusic 2009:

July 25 (Saturday) — Dengue Fever, a Los Angeles-based indie rock band that sounds like “a Cambodian pop rock psychedelic dance party!” — according to the band’s MySpace page. A new documentary, Sleepwalking Through the Mekong, follows the band on its recent journey to Cambodia where the band performed 1960s and ‘70s Cambodian rock ‘n’ roll “in the country where it was created and very nearly destroyed,” according to an online synopsis. In the documentary’s trailer, a band member says the music is based on California surf music, rewritten with Cambodian melodies. The band, hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “quite possibly the most original pop band in LA,” has produced three albums: Dengue Fever, Venus on Earth and Escape From the Dragon House. Watch and listen: and .

Aug. 14 (Friday) — Rokia Traoré, representing a new generation of African musicians who respect tradition but refuse to be bound by it. The award-winning Traoré, backed by her own electric guitar, creates an exquisite, sultry soundscape that blends American soul and blues with her Malian roots. “It all started with a sound inside Rokia Traoré’s head,” according to her Web site. “The most adventurous singer-songwriter in Africa knew that she wanted to create a new musical style that was ‘more modern, but still African, something more blues and rock than my folk guitar.’ Then she heard an old gretsch, the classic electric guitar so beloved by American rockabilly bands back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and played by everyone from Chet Atkins to George Harrison. That was the sound she had been looking for, and it has helped to bring a fresh and startling new dimension to her exquisite and adventurous songs.” Traoré, described by The Christian Science Monitor as “Africa’s answer to Joni Mitchell," has four albums to her credit. Watch and listen: .