The Blasters, Dave Alvin and Me…

But the thing about The Blasters was that we were just playing our version of old Rhythm & Blues, all hopped up and fast, but that’s all there was. It struck a chord that night, and several other nights in several other cities we were banned from. It wasn’t like we were calling for people to burn down the city, you know, we were just playing our songs. Our attitude was always that when these things happened we didn’t stop playing, because we weren’t going to let that stop us from playing. Our job as musicians is to play. And your job as a promoter, this that and the other, is to make sure these things don’t happen. Whether that’s the right attitude or not, that was our attitude.
Dave Alvin

***The Blasters (1981) signed by Dave***

I had a '61 Fender Mustang, still have it ... and a lot of the people in the audience liked The Blasters... but then there's an element of the audience that hated The Blasters. We were almost like their older brothers who liked rhythm and blues. And they were going to show their displeasure. One kid threw this beer bottle really well and he threw it right at my head, and I raised — in maybe the greatest moment of my life physically — I raised the guitar up to cover my face at exactly the time that it got to my face, but the guitar got in the way and, yeah, there's about a six-inch-long, quarter-inch-deep gash in the Mustang to this day from that beer bottle. That kind of stuff happened. I remember it was in the mid 90s when I started relaxing before I went onstage, because I could go, 'Oh, wow, nobody's gonna throw anything. I think those days are in the past for me.'
Dave Alvin

***Teenage Cruisers (1980) signed by Dave***

I don't know if "Fourth Of July" is my most Chandleresque song, but it was definitely trying to say a lot with a little. Sometimes I try to say a lot with a lot. But that song was trying to say a lot with a little. When I was writing it, I had a third verse, which I threw away, because the weight of the song with the third verse felt too heavy. On the other hand, with just the two verses and the little part that goes 'whatever happened/I apologize,' it felt like, 'Is that enough? Is that possibly enough? I get it. But will anyone else?' Here's what I've learned over time, and my only advice to a young traditional roots rock songwriter is that a song you think is entirely personal and no one else will get it is sometimes the most universal. I don't know too many songwriters who were trained or schooled as songwriters. So it's a feel thing. When X wanted to record the song and we recorded a couple of demos for Elektra, one of the producers, who is a notable musician who shall remain nameless, said, "I'm not getting enough. It needs more." So I thought, well, maybe I should pull that third verse back into it? But then I thought, no, it's getting the point across. They're either breaking up or they're staying together.
Dave Alvin

***See How We Are (1987) signed by Dave, John Doe, Exene Cervenka, DJ Bonebrake, Tony Gilkyson***

There are many musical traditions in our household. Birthdays are celebrated with a raucous and rousing "Birthday" by the Beatles and the soulful ebullience of "Happy Birthday" by Stevie Wonder. Christmas treats run the gamut, Chet Baker to John Fahey to Frank Sinatra, and even, Jacob Miller's "Natty Christmas" makes a festive and green Yuletide appearance. Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated year round (as it should be!) and the more maudlin and morose the melodies the better. The talents of Paul Brady, Van Morrison, Sinead O'Connor, and, especially Shane MacGowan and The Pogues on "Carrickfergus", "Raglan Road", "Ye Auld Triangle", "The Homes Of Donegal", "Peggy Gordon", "Streams Of Whiskey" and "Wild Mountain Thyme" stoke and soothe my Celtic melancholy. "Grand weepers and grim reapers", as Tom Waits once described his music, "...beautiful melodies telling me terrible things." Amen brother Tom, amen.

Another great tradition occurs on our Nation's birthday, and surely we are not alone when we play "Fourth Of July" by the Los Angeles punk band X turned up way past eleven. It just sounds better that way. "Fourth of July" was written by the incomparable American roots music avatar, Dave Alvin, who formed The Blasters in 1979 with his older brother Phil. The Blasters released four critically acclaimed albums from 1980 to 1986 until Dave departed. Thereafter, the brothers remained estranged for decades, following in a great rock and roll bickering siblings tradition, advanced by the peevish Forgertys of Creedence Clearwater Revival, the petulant Davies of The Kinks, and the fractious Gallaghers of Oasis. Fortunately, Dave and Phil have enjoyed a recent rapprochement, and they have released two albums in tribute to their early rock and roll influences: Big Joe Turner and Big Bill Broonzy. As Dave acknowledged, "We argue sometimes, but we never argue about Big Bill Broonzy", the subject of their 2014 album, Common Ground: Dave & Phil Alvin Sing and Play The Songs Of Big Bill Broonzy, "Big Bill, he was the entrance drug into prewar blues. That's the record Phil came home with that was all late '30s recordings, and that was an eye-opening thing." Of his relationship with his brother, Dave recently confided, "Well, we’re getting along great. We actually haven’t been this close in decades. Over the past year, he’s had two life-threatening health issues, and that’s brought us even closer. For years there was a lot of… anger’s not the word, but misunderstandings. And there still are. But brothers are brothers. Brothers are gonna fight, brothers are gonna quibble, and brothers are gonna love each other. That’s just the way it is." Yes, it was not always lilacs and lilies for the brothers Alvin.

***Lost Time promo (2015) signed by Dave and Phil***

The Blasters never really fit into the Los Angeles hard core punk scene of the 1980s. The nihilistic speed metal and the discordant thrash of Black Flag, The Minutemen and the Circle Jerks was alien to Dave and Phil. At their core, they were blues and R&B aficionados. Dave described his early influences, "I wanted to be cool, that's about it. I wanted to play music from an early age which is one of the reasons why, when I was a certain age, I started sneaking into clubs. I had three older cousins, they were like ten, twelve years older than me, we’re talking about when I was like five and six. My cousin Donna was a wild girl, with a beehive hairdo and a jacked up ’49 Ford and she was an R&B chick. She liked Ray Charles and Big Joe Turner and doo-wop and rockabilly and things like that. My cousin Mike played acoustic guitar and banjo and he liked Ramblin’ Jack Elliot and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and folk blues kinds of things. And then my cousin JJ grew up on a ranch and he liked Buck Owens. My view of the musical universe was really based on my older cousins’ tastes and by the time I was eleven or twelve, I was collecting old records and by the time I was thirteen or fourteen, my brother and I were sneaking into bars. It was like, 'We like this music, where can we go hear it?' At the same time, my mom would drive me to see Jimi Hendrix and a year later we were copping rides from guys to get to a club like the Ash Grove or to neighborhood bars. In those days, where we lived, you could find blues and honky tonk music and all that stuff in neighborhood bars and that was my education to a great extent."

For a kid straight outta Downey, CA, this was splendid training and breeding. Dave became the principal songwriter and lyricist for The Blasters, and he found the perfect voice for his music, "Now, I was never a singer. When I was a little kid, I got kicked out of choir. My older brother Phil was one of the star choir singers of the Catholic Church and I was asked not to be part of it. So when I wrote songs for the Blasters, I'd go to rehearsal and sing them for like an hour and my brother would sit and listen and say, 'Sing it again, sing it again.' Then, when he would step up to the microphone, he'd say, 'Okay, I got it' and I'd never sing the song again. I mean, I had this brother with this big, loud, magnificent blues voice." Unfortunately, the Alvin talents did not translate into fame or commercial success. Director Walter Hill solicited The Blasters for the music for 48 Hours, a hit film and a breakthrough for Eddie Murphy. Alas, Dave didn't like the script and refused to participate. As he said later with apparent equanimity, "We never sold out, which was both a good thing and a bad thing."

After leaving The Blasters in 1985, Dave joined X briefly and played guitar on See How We Are, a record featuring "Fourth Of July" which has been a staple in our house ever since. He also joined The Knitters, an acoustic side project led by X vocalists and former husband and wife, Exene Cervenka and John Doe. Featuring an engaging mix of mostly covers of country (Albert Brumley's "Rank Stranger", Merle Haggard's "Silver Wings"), folk ("Walkin' Cane" from the 1880 quill of James Bland), blues (Lead Belly's "Rock Island Line") and rock (Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild"), The Knitters have released two albums in their modest discography: Poor Little Critter On the Road (1985) and The Modern Sounds Of The Knitters (2005).

***The Knitters: Poor Little Critter On The Road (1985) signed by Dave, John Doe, Exene Cervenka, DJ Bonebrake***

As a solo artist, Dave has released twelve albums and his range is extraordinary. From burning down the house rockers "Wanda and Duane" and "Haley's Comet" to country weepers "Bus Station" and an exquisitely re-imagined "Border Radio" to the folk bluster of "King Of California" and the Civil War horror of "Andersonville", there is little that Dave cannot write, sing and master. He is a consummate storyteller and a ferocious guitar slinger. I have seen him many times over the years, whether bashing on guitar with The Knitters at Irving Plaza in New York City and at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco, or fronting Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women at the Santa Monica Pier, or performing at smaller clubs like the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, Dave always delivers the goods. Each time, I met Dave after a show, I found him to be generous, his wit and humor as dry and laconic as "Dry River", a song he wrote about his childhood. "I was born by a river, but it was paved with cement..." Asked in an interview whether it bothered him at his shows that 'there's some clown yelling all night for "Marie, Marie" or "Fourth Of July"? Dave's response is telling, "And oftentimes, I'm that clown. I may be the rare artist who doesn't get tired of playing songs that he wrote. Part of it is that I'm always startled that I wrote them in the first place."

***Blue Boulevard (1991) signed by Dave***

In April 2005, I saw a very memorable show at Cafe Nine, a small venue in New Haven, Connecticut. Touted as 'The Musician's Living Room' (accurate if your favorite musician's living room resembled a dive bar!), Cafe Nine is housed in a decaying brick building. Dave was playing an acoustic show with Chris Miller, his sole accompanist on guitar. I entered and walked into the bar. The stage to the right of the door entrance barely held room for one, let alone two guitarists. When the show started, Dave and Chris squeezed in, and the front door was sealed shut, in probable defiance of the (absent) fire marshal. All tardy patrons were thus denied admittance, and more than a few banged on the door, their clamor and pleas to no avail.

The crowd was what you might expect. Aging rock fans clinging to their fading hopes, swilling Heinekens, spilling Budweisers, and blotting out the last vestiges of a Sunday night in a sweat box. Dave and Chris were in fine spirits and played stripped down songs off Dave's recently released Ashgrove, titled after the legendary Los Angeles music club on Melrose Avenue, the site of many concerts where Dave and Phil saw their heroes - Big Joe Turner, Lightnin' Hopkins, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee - in their well spent youth. Dave and Chris played a mix of newer songs - "Rio Grande", "Ashgrove", "Everett Reuss" and "Nine Volt Heart" and worked in some Blasters' favorites - "Marie Marie" and "So Long Baby, Goodbye." to placate the boisterous fans who were pleading for more Blasters. Near the end of the show, during a guitar tuning break, Dave asked for requests for the encore. A fusillade of shouts erupted. One particularly persistent fan insisted on "From A Kitchen Table", a wistful ballad of unrequited love, regret, and love letters never read.

I hope this letter finds you
Wherever you may be
'Cause I mailed some awhile back
And they were all returned to me
Ain't nothin' I can tell you 'bout the hometown
Everything changes, but nothing's new
Just Sunday night at the kitchen table
Finishin' a beer and thinkin' of you.

And I still work the same job
Just live with my mom for free
'Cause ever since the old man passed on
It just got harder to leave.

Well I heard a rumor that you got married
Though you swore that you never would
I guess you finally got your own kids now
You ever tell 'em 'bout the old neighborhood?
Like the time we stole your dad's car
Drove all night down Imperial Highway
You kept sayin' "Maybe we should turn around, "
And I said "It don't take much to get away."

But I still work the same job
Just live with my mom for free
'Cause ever since the old man passed on
It just got harder to leave.

Guess that's all that I've got to tell you
I guess things turned out how they're meant to be
I just hope that this letter finds you
But until then I'll just keep it with me.

”From A Kitchen Table”

A beautiful and mournful song, it even includes a haunting clarinet solo on the record, hardly fodder for a rockin' Sunday night encore. Dave laughed, "You know, that's a really tough song to play in a bar." Then he added over the din, "But it is Sunday night, so what the hell, let's give it a go." The crowd grew more reverent as Dave spun his tale about the broken dreams and unfulfilled promises which led to the quiet desperation and desolation of a Sunday night missive written from a kitchen table (or a barroom!). Despite the ongoing revelry and bacchanalia in Cafe Nine, the irony was not lost on me. Once again, Dave Alvin was reading our mail!

***Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women (2009) signed by Dave***

After the show, I chatted with Dave briefly as he signed a couple of vinyl. I thanked him for his music. What was it like hanging with Big Joe Turner? I'm also a really big fan, I said. He paused. A long pause. He was deliberate and careful in his words, "It was like....hanging....with Joe Turner," he said with a thin smile. He drew a cigarette on the cover of Romeo's Escape, an homage to an ever present menthol, always dangling from his lips. I declined to ask him about his brother, I thought he was probably inundated with requests. In fact, he later wrote, "What's Up With Your Brother", a duet with Phil, to address all fan's concerns. Mostly, I just thanked him for his songs and music. I said, 'It was ballsy to play "From A Kitchen Table" in a bar, especially, this bar.' Ever modest, Dave replied, "Thanks, I wasn't sure that was going to work, but it turned out fine." Yes, it did.

***Eleven Eleven (2011) signed by Dave***

As he once said about his heroes, "Big Joe and T-Bone and Lightnin’ and whoever, who didn’t quit. It wasn’t even a lifestyle, it was just life. You just played music."
Dave Alvin, a well lived life playing and writing music, American music. Like he says, "Everything changes, but nothing's new."

***Romeo’s Escape (1987) signed by Dave***

When I look back on my time in this racket, the one thing I know is that you never know what people are going to like. I didn't think anyone would like "Fourth of July" when I was writing it. All I knew is that I liked it. But as a songwriter, you have to persevere through that board of critics that's in your head going, 'You might as well just throw this away. Nobody's going to like this one.' You just have to get to a place of acceptance.

Dave Alvin