f66 Texas California Line
Two veteran American songwriters and twangists of a rootsy persuasion have been recording and touring together. John Kruth hears road tales.
morning newspaper to know the Devil’s got the ‘Land of the Free’ by the throat or some other tender part of its anatomy. There seems to be a massive pall hanging over the place. And while the Trump dis- aster has made many question nearly everything we’ve been brought up to believe in, there are still a few convincing reasons to, as Bob Dylan sang years ago during his Christian phase, “Strengthen the things that remain”.
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American roots music is certainly one of the good things that continues to feed our collective souls like very little else. But despite the constant onslaught of political debacles and celebrity casualties, Dave Alvin has done pretty well for himself lately. The blue-jeaned troubadour has recently, as he put it, had “a damn street named after [him]” in Deer Park, Texas (just south of Houston). It just so happens to be located, appropriately enough, between Lightnin’ Hopkins Street and Buddy Holly Street.
Despite the various pitfalls of bardic wandering, Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, both veterans of American song, have managed not to only remain inspired and prolific over the years, but continue to thrive on “dreams and gaso- line,” as Dave sings on the new album’s title track. Their new collaboration, Downey To Lubbock, brings together the West Texas country crooner with the Cali- fornia roots rocker to help make America beautiful again (without having to get a haircut… if you recall those billboards back in the day which harangued hippies to cut their locks for the sake of tidier grooming and national pride).
Their collaboration was initially born from a series of acoustic concerts, with Jimmie Dale and Dave trading songs, night after night, as they boiled the setlist down to a clutch of tunes which included every- thing from old blues, country numbers and rockers, along with a couple of unexpect- ed covers and a pair of originals which comprised their new album.
hings in the good ol’ USA have been a bit rough lately. You don’t need to check the zeit- geist on Facebook, switch on the TV, or even pick up the
Back in the ’90s Jimmie Dale, as he said, “became of fan of Dave Alvin” while on the ‘Monsters of Folk’ tour, which also included Butch Hancock, Tom Russell and the late/great Steve Young. While the pair became “good friends,” they “never real- ly performed together until 2017 when we did a series of shows,” which took them across Texas to New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado.
Each night the soundcheck provided a brief window for them to, as Jimmie Dale explained, explore their “respective repertoires”.
“We’d usually start off and finish with something we both knew, like maybe Dal- las, by Jimmie Dale,” Dave recalled. “The pool of communal songs was amazing. One of us would say, ‘Hey do you know this?’ and the hijinks would begin. It could be a song by Sam Cooke, Merle Travis, Lightnin’ Hopkins or Elvis… About half the songs from our live shows wound up on the album.”
Recently Dave took a shot at defin- ing at that elusive term ‘American Folk Music’ on his Facebook page, claiming that the genre stretched “well beyond the stereotypical singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar in a coffee house,” and could be anything from “quiet or loud or in between, that grew out of the tradi- tional folk musical/lyrical forms of bal- lads, blues and spirituals. This could include everything from a gospel choir and an electric blues band to dulcimer strummers, cowboy balladeers, raucous rockabilly bashers, bagpipe blowers, protest howlers, Western swingers, clawhammer foot-stompers, doo-wop harmonisers, fiddle slashers, corrido can- tantes, accordeon squeezers, honky-tonk weepers, South-side harmonica wizards, Lakota drummers, polka pumpers, reverb surfers, railroad troubadours and on and on and on. And, yeah, even singer-song- writers playing acoustic guitars in coffee houses.” That pretty much sums up this delicious eclectic mix from these two American troubadours.
The album features solid re-workings
of K.C. Moan, a low-down blues that brims with regret, and Stealin’, driven by Dave’s punchy steel-body guitar with some funky,
chunky mandolin from Nick Forrester (“He’s a great musician… I hate him,” Dave laughed) while Alvin and Gilmore’s vocals playfully weave back and forth. “Our version of Stealin’ goes back to the Mississippi Sheiks, and the Jim Kweskin Jug Band,” Jimmie Dale pointed out.
We’re treated to Lloyd Price’s classic Lawdy Miss Clawdy, complete with the sweet shimmer of Van Dyke Parks’ accordeon, until Alvin busts the song open with a stinging Stratocaster lead. Some- times it seems like Dave is more of a rat- tlesnake preacher than guitar player; either way, he is wrangling something wild and potentially lethal.
“Sometimes Dave’s guitar becomes an extension of my voice and sometimes it sounds like he’s flailing,” Jimmie Dale chuckled. “But he’s definitely in control.”
Although Woody Guthrie’s tragic
waltz Deportees has been covered by everyone from Joan Baez, Judy Collins, the Byrds, Jackson Browne to Arlo Guthrie over the years, the song seems more poignant than ever with the recent victimisation of immigrants, the looming threat of depor- tation along with the prospect of Trump’s wall along the Mexican border. Jimmie Dale’s voice ripples with compassion as he begs, “Who are all these dear friends falling like dry leaves?” as Alvin’s chiming guitar perfectly frames the haunting lulla- by. “Jimmie pulled that one out. It’s been done a lot! We purposely didn’t put any mandolin or accordeon on it, and I stayed away from playing any Spanish guitar riffs,” Alvin said, hoping to avoid whatever inherent clichés are implied by the song. “Instead we used organ pads,” which laid down a dreamy, ambient lilt for Jimmie Dale’s earnest vibrato-soaked voice.
“We were both friends of Steve
Young,” Dave said, explaining the choice of Young’s gentle rolling ballad Silverlake. “He lived in Echo Park, and I lived in Silver Lake [Los Angeles neighbourhoods]. We’d get together and shoot the shit and play guitar. He told me he’d written the song for me, so I recorded it, but I didn’t really do it justice. He’d also told Jimmie he ‘wrote this song that I want you to sing.’ It was Silverlake! So, we did it together and it finally worked out!”
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