I saw Dave Alvin live once, though I didn't know it at the
time. It was the summer of 1983 at Red Rocks. He was in a band called the
Blasters, and they were opening for Eric Clapton. I had no idea who these guys
were. They played music that sounded like a throwback to the 1950s. They looked
the part too – greased back hair and blues bowling shirts. KILO never played their music, so I had no
clue about them. There wasn’t much of a music press back then. Rolling Stone
was more interested in stuff like Duran Duran and various and sundry New Wave
shit. They were no help – I still no clue. The Blasters were an unknown
quantity to me. I couldn't name a single song of theirs. They played for about
thirty minutes. Their music wasn't bad, but I just wasn't interested. I was
there to see Clapton, who had yet to enter his Adult Contemporary Hell phase.
While I didn't rush out to buy any of their music, I hadn't forgotten about
them either.
About three months ago I was searching iTunes for new
music when I came upon a couple of albums by Dave Alvin [Eleven Eleven
and From An Old Guitar: Rare and Unreleased Tracks]. I know him by his
reputation for being a damn fine guitar player. I knew he wrote Long White
Cadillac [Dwight Yoakam]. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but what I did find
was pure roots music gold. Alvin once wrote on his Bandcamp page “There are two
types of folk music: quiet folk music and loud folk music. I play both.” This
is the best description I have found anywhere that describes the music that
writers classify as ‘Americana.’ Alvin’s music incorporates elements of blues,
R & B, rockabilly, country, jazz, gospel, Western swing, Tex-Mex and Cajun
music. Gram Parsons had a different name for it – he called it Cosmic American
Music. Whatever one chooses to call it, I call it my latest musical addiction.
As addicts are wont to do, I’m always searching for my next fix. Right now,
Dave Alvin is the next fix that will do for awhile.
A fellow Scorpio, Dave Alvin was born November 11, 1955
[“Eleven Eleven”] in Downey, California. He and his older brother Phil
[two years older] used to frequent places like the Ash Grove and the Shrine
Auditorium. They would see the likes of Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker, Buddy
Guy, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Johnny "Guitar" Watson. Not only did the
Alvin brothers watch these guys, they got to be friends and hang out with them.
They learned roots music from the source. They and their friends formed The
Blasters in 1979. They were rockabilly but a little bit more, including blues,
R&B and country. Their music could easily have come from Sun Records. The
Blasters were contemporaries of Dwight Yoakam, Los Lobos and X. In the early
1980s they weren’t in the picture as far as musical interests go. English hard
rock and heavy metal and American blues rock were more my speed, but as they
say, better late than never. All was not well in the band, though. Phil Alvin
was of the mind of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Dave wrote most of the
songs and wanted to go in a more singer/songwriter direction. The Blasters lasted
three albums before they imploded. Phil got his way, and Dave went solo. Of the
band, Dave Alvin said:
“The Blasters were 5 guys who
all grew up together loving old blues, rockabilly, etc. So we were/are all
brothers and we all played together and fought like brothers. It wasn’t just Phil and I who were
fighting. We all did. That emotional intensity between all five of us is why I
think we were such a tight and, well, intense live band. I left for too many
reasons to go into but that intensity that I just mentioned, got to be to too
much to take on a daily basis.”
Eleven Eleven and From an Old Guitar were
the hook. I figured that whatever he did in between the two albums had to be
good as well. He recorded two albums with Phil - Common Ground: Dave Alvin
& Phil Alvin Play and Sing the Songs of Big Bill Broonzy [2014] and Lost
Time [2015] – and one with Jimmie Dale Gilmore - Downey to Lubbock
[2018]. All three albums were done with the same band, The Guilty Men. The two
albums with Phil were blues records. The album with Jimmie Dale Gilmore, the
“hippie country singer” with a high lonesome voice, was a little of everything
[blues, country, folk, rock]. It’s all good and I was “all in” – I had to get
the rest. Not only is the choice of material first-rate, but I like the band.
Alvin plays with another guitarist [Chris Miller] who plays slide. They trade
solos much like two guitar players from a band of renown from Georgia. Phil
Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore are great singers. Dave Alvin isn’t as good, but
he doesn’t embarrass himself, either. He does that “half-singing, half-talking”
thing the way Frank Zappa did. Alvin and
Jimmie Dale Gilmore are recording their second album together as I write this.
It will be mine!
Dave Alvin’s music is fairly eclectic, and I can put it
into three different “boxes”: blues rock, singer/songwriter, and
musicologist/song interpreter.
Blues rock
Romeo's Escape [1987] – After Alvin left
The Blasters, he joined The Knitters [recording Poor Little Critter on the
Road], a country folk offshoot of X. In a “seemed like a good idea at the
time” moment, he joined X, long enough to record See How We Are. But
Alvin wanted to go his own way. This album was Alvin’s first as a singer, about
which he said:
“I had never sung before, and I had to get drunk to do
it. So when I listen to it, I hear a drunk caterwauling. Now, I'm more gentle
about it. It's taken a lot of years to figure out how to sing.”
Here Alvin rearranged three Blasters songs [Long White
Cadillac, Border Radio and Jubilee Train] and the one song he
wrote for X [Fourth of July].
Blue Blvd [1991] & Museum of
Heart [1993] – If Raymond Chandler wrote songs instead of novels, this
is what they would sound like. The songs are very good, the musicianship is
top-notch. I have only one complaint – the drums are too loud. If I was “king
for a day” I would fix that and put them lower in the mix. Dave Alvin’s songs
don’t need an arena rock sound.
Ashgrove [2004] – After two albums of
acoustic music [King of California and Blackjack David], Alvin
plugs back in and looks back. The album alternates between blues rock and
country folk. The opening title song describes the long-closed LA nightclub
where Dave Alvin and brother Phil would see their musical heroes – Big Joe
Turner, Lightnin’ Hopkins, the Rev. Gary Davis and many more. Not only does he
look back but he also describes his own life of being a musician and all it
entails. The blues are spread out in Black Sky, Black Haired Girl,
Sinful Daughter, and Out of Control. He leaves the blues of the
Ashgrove and heads for Texas where he does a country tune, Rio Grande. Another
country tune, Nine Volt Heart, is a nostalgic look back on the
importance of the radio in peoples’ lives. The hushed, fingerpicked The Man
In The Bed is a eulogy to his late father. Somewhere in Time co-written
with Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo and Louis Pérez which appeared on their release The Ride,
released a month before Alvin’s version here. Alvin’s band of minstrels, the
Guilty Men [including Greg Leisz], are superb.
Singer/Songwriter
King of California [1994] – Alvin decided,
after three records with an electric band, to cut his next batch of tunes
acoustically. Relieved of the burden of having to compete with a loud band,
Alvin found his voice, to which he credits producer Greg Leisz. As with Romeo’s
Escape, Alvin decided to re-record several songs from his back catalog [Border
Radio, Barn Burning, Fourth of July, Bus Station, Little
Honey, Every Night About This Time]. These songs from loud electric
bands [The Blasters, X] are done in a quiet, intimate setting. He added some
well-chosen covers [East Texas Blues (Whistlin' Alex Moore), Mother
Earth (Memphis Slim), and What Am I Worth (George Jones), a duet
with Syd Straw]. The 25th
anniversary release also includes a duet with Katy Moffat (The Cuckoo),
and a very fine cover of Merle Haggard’s Kern River. The addition of
several covers goes a bit against the “singer/songwriter” thing, but it does
add to a quitter, acoustic direction that accommodates Alvin’s limited singing
range. He’s not a shouter like his brother Phil, but with these songs he
doesn’t need to be. The quiet arrangements and his low baritone voice are a
perfect fit.
Blackjack David [1998] – Blackjack David
picks up where King of California left off. Like King of California, Blackjack David is produced by Greg Leisz and was recorded
with pretty much the same team that created King of California. Unlike King
of California, Blackjack David has only one cover – the title track.
The two albums complement each other very well.
Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women [2009] - Dave
Alvin & the Guilty Women [2009] was done with an all-female band [most
of whom are from Austin], excellent musicians all. The most notable
collaborator is Cindy Cashdollar on dobro and steel guitar. The drummer is Lisa
Pankrantz, who replaced Don Heffington in the Guilty Men [making them the
Guilty Ones] after he passed away. There are two fiddle players [Laurie Lewis
and Amy Farris], one other guitarist [Nina Gerber], bassist Sarah Brown, and
singer Christy McWilson. The band came together as a one-off to play San
Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, but Alvin like playing with
these musicians so much he wanted to cut an album with them. The music combined folk, blues, rock and
roll, Western swing, bluegrass, R&B,
rockabilly and Cajun. They change the Blasters’ Marie Marie into a
zydeco number. Boss of the Blues is a Western swing nod to Big Joe
Turner, with whom Dave and Phil Alvin got to know and hang out as teenagers
when they would see him at the LA nightclub the Ash Grove. Nana and Jimi
is about Dave’s mom dropping him off at the LA Forum to see a Jimi Hendrix
concert. Downey Girl is about Karen Carpenter. They even recorded Que
Sera, Sera [!].
Musicologist/Song Interpreter
Public Domain [2000] – As the title
suggests, these are traditional songs that have been around so long nobody
knows who wrote them Instead of
note-for-note recreations that would be museum pieces, Dave Alvin does these old
folk, country and blues tunes in a most nontraditional way.
West of the West [2006] - Unlike his
collection of traditional folk and blues songs, this one is a tribute to
California songwriters. I am unfamiliar with some of the songwriters - Kate
Wolf, Kevin Blackie Farrell, Richard Berry, Jim Ringer. Conversely, everybody
knows the others – Merle Haggard, Jerry Garcia, John Fogerty, Jackson Browne,
Tom Waits, and Brian Wilson. He also gives Los Lobos a shout. Wait! A Beach
Boys song? Yes, Surfer Girl. It has to be heard to be believed. Dave
Alvin the musicologist gives us a California history lesson in song.
I put the two albums with Phil Alvin and the one album
with Jimmie Dale Gilmore in the Musicologist/Song Interpreter box
Just when I thought I’d heard all of Dave Alvin there was
to hear, along came The Third Mind. He read a biography of Miles Davis that
detailed how he made such works like Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson.
Miles gathered musicians in a studio, picked a key and a groove then had the
musicians play for days while he recorded the whole thing. Once recorded, Miles
and producer Teo Macero would edit the music into compositions. Alvin had the
same idea. He said “I had a crazy idea and was looking for musicians who
perhaps didn’t think it was so insane.”
Alvin had a safety net that Miles Davis didn’t have [or need]. He picked
music that was associated with the 1960s underground from the likes of Michael
Bloomfield, Fred Neil, Alice Coltrane, and Roky Erikson. The musicians didn’t
rehearse. They decided on a key and started recording to see what happened.
They sat in a circle, watched and listened to what each other played, and
improvised, as much as one can within the confines of known songs. Hearing an
improvised 16-minute take on Bloomfield’s East West is well worth the
purchase. It’s a tuneful psychedelic freakout.
In 1980, a guy named Chris Desjardins [aka Chris D.]
formed a punk band in Los Angeles [The Flesh Eaters]. This band had three members of The Blasters
[Dave Alvin, drummer Bill Bateman, and sax player Steve Berlin] and two guys
from X [bassist John Doe and percussionist D.J. Bonebrake]. They recorded one
album - A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die [1981]. Band members came and
went with regularity. Chris D. recorded six more Flesh Eaters albums between
then and 2004. In 2007, the ”all-star” lineup reformed and played shows whenever
schedules allowed. They went back into the studio in 2019 and created I Used
to Be Pretty. Of the album’s eleven songs, there are two new songs, three
covers, and the rest are new recordings of songs from the previous six albums. Alvin
gets to be just the guitar player here. Alvin gets to rip your face off on Peter
Green’s The Green Manalishi, and the 13-minute finale Ghost Cave
Lament reminds me of those really long Doors songs like The End and When
the Music’s Over.
What about that Blasters music that I ignored forty years
ago? In 2002 Rhino Records compiled Testament: The Complete Slash Recordings.
I didn’t feel like paying $55 for the set on Amazon, but I found two live
recordings from the reunited original band - Trouble Bound [2002] and The
Blasters Live: Going Home [2004]. Of the 33 songs between the two albums,
only four of them appear on both. This is a comprehensive enough overview of
the Blasters, and it’s live [even better].
Here's my recommended playlist:
The Green Manalishi [The Flesh Eaters, I
Used to Be Pretty – 2019]
Downey to Lubbock [Dave Alvin & Jimmie
Dale Gilmore, Downey to Lubbock – 2018]
World's in a Bad Condition [Dave Alvin
& Phil Alvin, Lost Time – 2015]
Mister Kicks [Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin, Lost
Time – 2015]
Silverlake [Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale
Gilmore, Downey to Lubbock – 2018]
Harlan County Line [Eleven Eleven –
2011]
Johnny Ace Is Dead [Eleven Eleven –
2011]
Dirty Nightgown [Eleven Eleven –
2011]
Who's Been Here [From an Old Guitar –
2020]
Highway 61 Revisited [From an Old Guitar
– 2020]
Sonora's Death Row [West of the West
– 2006]
Murrietta's Head [Eleven Eleven –
2011]
Mobile Blue [From an Old Guitar –
2020]
Signal Hill Blues [Eleven Eleven –
2011]
Downey Girl [Dave Alvin & the
Guilty Women – 2009]
Marie Marie [Dave Alvin & the
Guilty Women – 2009]
Beautiful City 'Cross the River [From an
Old Guitar – 2020]
Never Trust a Woman [Eleven Eleven –
2011]
On the Way Downtown [From an Old Guitar –
2020]
Southern Flood Blues [Dave Alvin & Phil
Alvin, Common Ground – 2014]
Wee Baby Blues [Dave Alvin & Phil
Alvin, Lost Time – 2015]
Get Together [Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale
Gilmore, Downey to Lubbock – 2018]
Dry River [Blue Blvd. – 1991]
Andersonville [Blue Blvd. – 1991]
Thirty Dollar Room [Museum of Heart
– 1993]
As She Slowly Turns to Leave [Museum of
Heart – 1993]
Stranger in Town [Museum of Heart –
1993]
King of California [King of California
– 1994]
Fourth of July [King of California –
1994]
Border Radio [King of California –
1994]
East Texas Blues [King of California
– 1994]
Bus Station [King of California –
1994]
Mother Earth [King of California –
1994]
Blackjack David [Blackjack David - 1998]
California Snow [Blackjack David - 1998]
Evening Blues [Blackjack David - 1998]
1968 [Blackjack David - 1998]
Shenandoah [Public Domain: Songs From
The Wild Land – 2000]
Out in California [The Best of the Hightone
Years – 2008]
Ashgrove [Ashgrove – 2004]
Rio Grande [Ashgrove – 2004]
Black Sky [Ashgrove – 2004]
Black Haired Girl [Ashgrove – 2004]
Loser [West of the West – 2006]
Kern River [West of the West – 2006]
East West [The Third Mind, 2020]
Ghost Cave Lament [The
Flesh Eaters, I Used to Be Pretty – 2019]