Dave Alvin Blasts Back- Rock vet returns with new live album, Blasters compilation
"There are two types of musicians," explains Dave Alvin. "The kind who lays around and lives off somebody else, and the other kind, who -- in order to feel good about himself, like he's contributing to society -- has got to keep working."
Though Alvin laughs easily, the not-so-laidback California singer-songwriter is in the latter category, particularly this year, which has found him behind, underneath and on the boards, and anything but bored. So far, he's compiled Testament: The Complete Slash Recordings, a definitive collection of music by the Blasters, the band he formed with his brother Phil in the early Eighties; the group reunited for some select dates this spring. From a Los Angeles punk rock vantage point, the five-man roadhouse R&B and rockabilly band from Downey, California, spearheaded a revival of a roots rock sound that still refuses to die (though Dave quit to go solo in '87). Since then, he's recorded eight solo albums of poetic, California-centric singer-songwriter material, from his debut Romeo's Escape to this month's Out in California, his second live collection recorded with road dogs the Guilty Men.
Still not content to rest on his stellar Americana/heritage artist/cool L.A. guy credentials (Dwight Yoakam covered his "Long White Cadillac," X did "Fourth of July," he once acted in the movie Alison Anders named after his song "Border Radio" and he earned a Grammy in 2001 for his reinterpretations of folk classics on Public Domain), Alvin continues to produce (this year's Bed of Roses by ex-Picketts singer Christy McWilson) and collaborate (with Peter Case for the Grammy-nominated Avalon Blues: A Tribute to the Music of Mississippi John Hurt). And he just wrapped another reunion stint, this time with the Knitters, the twangy side project band he formed in 1983 with fellow L.A. punk-era survivors John Doe and Exene Cervenka of X. James Brown might as well face it and get on down: The Hardest Working Man in Show Business these days is Dave Alvin.
Was it easy picking up where you left off with John and Exene eighteen years ago for last week's Knitters dates?
When you share certain experiences with people, they become family. When John and Exene and I were close, socially and musically, we forged certain bonds, and time doesn't erase those. We started the Knitters as escape valves from our bands. I don't know why they wanted to restart the engine but for me it's nice because I don't have to worry about anything. When I have my shows, I have to worry about everything -- Are the hotels gonna get paid? Is the band gonna get paid? -- all the mundane worries. With the Knitters I get to just show up and play.
Would the same thing apply to working with your brother and the Blasters? At the time you left, it was well known y'all didn't get along, so reuniting seems like it comes with some risks.
My only trepidation about getting back together was whether we'd sound any good or as good as we thought we did, but we plugged in at our first rehearsal and we sounded better. All five of us guys grew up together, so the way I look at, it's kind of like driving back home to visit the folks as opposed to living with them.
What went into putting the tracks together for Testament, and how does it feel to see your body of work with the Blasters collected into one pretty package?
Certain members of the band didn't want it to ever come out, and, contractually, Rhino could've put the tracks out at anytime, but they were very cool about it and waited for the whole band to agree. To me, it was overdue because in this industry if you're out of print, you don't exist. I think a lot of people didn't know or forgot what the Blasters did. I'm pretty proud -- I hear mistakes, but one thing we didn't lack was sincerity.
Are the two Guilty Men live albums in the space of six years about correcting songs you didn't feel like you got right in the studio, or is it more about capturing the performances on a given night?
I'm never happy with recorded versions; it's always something. There are songs on this live album -- "Blue Boulevard" and "Andersonville" -- that I didn't get entirely right the first time I recorded them. But I've got a great band, and I'm really proud of them and something that happens when we play live is difficult to reproduce in the studio. It's a folk-blues-honky-tonk thing with a little bit of a jam band in it. On the right live show, it all clicks. Every night in the planning of shows, I leave holes for improvisation. We tour so much, I have to keep it fresh every night. We're constantly re-exploring the songs.
Where did "Highway 99," the one new song on Out in California, come from?
That popped up around a year ago. I don't really do straight country but I wanted to do it live because my guitar player Rick Shea and fiddle player Brantley Kearns play straight country. It's just sort of a tribute to Roy Nichols, Merle Haggard's guitar player, and to the West Coast country sound.
Your records are filed under everything from folk and blues to rock & roll. How do you like to characterize what you do?
To me, it's folk music, but some of it's loud. There are two kinds of folk music: loud and quiet. If I play a chord sequence on acoustic guitar, it's folk, and then play the exact same sequence on electric, some will say, "That's the blues." Or rock. The way I look at it, blues is folk music. Leadbelly was a folksinger. Muddy Waters was a folksinger. In some respects, Merle Haggard is a folksinger. My roots are in traditional American music.
What's your relationship to the music of Mississippi John Hurt that you're taking on the road this summer with Peter Case and Chris Smither for the Avalon Blues shows?
I was probably about thirteen or fourteen and had already gotten into the urban Chicago blues and more primitive blues before I discovered John Hurt. His level of expertise, his technique, stood out as did his spiritual quality . . . I know it sounds hackneyed, but you can't listen to John Hurt and not go away feeling renewed. His songs were deceivingly violent and aggressive and real. He dealt with very hard issues, but the way he was singing about them was so wise, you could tell he understood everything. To me, he's the Zen master of the blues.
With so much going on in your professional life, what do you do for fun?
Well, I used to like to go horseback riding, but I don't really have time for that anymore. I took a vacation a couple of years ago, but my dad was a union organizer and I got kind of ingrained with this idea that you had to be working all the time. Plus I've got this gnawing voice inside of me that never goes away that tells me I haven't done enough.
Yet you were recognized with a Grammy for your album Public Domain. Where do you keep the statuette?
I have a room full of LPs and CDs and music books and guitars and photographs of old musicians -- my inner sanctum -- and it's on top of a bookshelf, getting kind of dusty. I don't take it down and shine it, but I hate to say it, it's sort of my nuclear bomb that I can pull out and drop. There was an argument developing in the Blasters -- it was an absurd argument -- and I said, 'Screw you guys, I'm gonna go home and polish my Grammy.' It made me look kind of stupid, but it ended the argument.
DENISE SULLIVAN
(May 22, 2002) |
