May 2007- Welcome to my new website. I think it looks pretty swanky for a barroom guitar basher.

I'm very excited about having my own website and I'm looking forward to having some fun here. One of the fun things I plan to do, over the next weeks and months, will be posting some new and some not-so-new, rare recordings on the site that aren't currently available anywhere else. The first of these songs should be available early this summer and every few weeks or so I'll be adding more songs. Please check back for more info as I get this together.

There's also a fairly up-to-date (and as complete as my memory made possible) discography of all the music I've been fortunate to be a part of. This list covers everything from my work as a solo artist to appearances as a guest vocalist, band member, sideman and producer. There are links on the recordings that are still available if you wish to purchase them. Unfortunately, the out of print records on the list may only be available at some serious collector's rare record stores or maybe in some discount cut-out bins. Good luck if you feel like hunting them down.

The site also has a page listing of all my upcoming gigs (whether I'm playing solo and acoustic or loud and electric with my band, The Guilty Men) as well as a news page that will have information on upcoming recordings, tours or any oddball stuff I find myself wrapped up in.

I'd like to take this opportunity to make some serious "thank you's." First of all, my eternal gratitude to Scot Kleinman for all of his time, labor and patience the past several years hosting DaveAlvin.com. He's done an amazing job and I am forever in his debt. I intend to remain involved with Scot's site and will continue answering the questions ad messages that come to his dot-com site (I really enjoy the back and forth dialogue I get to have with everyone who writes to me there). Speaking of "forever in his debt," I want to thank Billy Davis for his very hard work and eternal enthusiasm at TheBlastersNewsletter.com. I honestly can't calculate how helpful, generous and inspirational Billy and Scot have been to me. Hell, they even convinced my brother Phil and I to reform the original Blasters for a couple of tours over the past few years. Anyone who could do that is damned good in my book. Thanks guys.

Continuing with the thank you's, I say this with no exaggeration, this new webpage wouldn't exist without the tireless efforts and visionary zeal of Heather Lilly, Jane Terry and Nancy Sefton. Everything that's good about this site is because of them and I owe them more than I can ever pay them back.

Anyway, I'll be adding a lot more content to the site over the next few weeks and if you have any suggestions for the site, please let me know. I'm a bit of a computer illiterate but Heather, Jane and Nancy will more than make up for my 21st century shortcomings.

Thanks for stopping by and see you down the road,
Dave Alvin

June 2007- Every now and then, someone asks me to write some liner notes for some album or another. It's a nice honor to be asked and I get a big kick doing this. Hell, I've even gotten paid a couple times for doing this. I hope you enjoy reading them. DA

Liner notes for TERRY ALLEN: JUAREZ Sugar Hill Reissue 2004

A few years ago in Italy, I watched Terry Allen pull an electric piano off of it's stand, raise it above his head like an angry Moses on Mount Sinai, then violently throw the helpless instrument to the floor with such righteous fury that the piano shattered into a hundred useless pieces. He stood calmly above the wreckage, grinning proudly.

Why he did it, I don't know but I have to admit that I was more than a little scared. I was standing just a few feet from him, performing a Bo Diddley song in one of those end of the show jam sessions/sing-alongs with Terry, Guy Clark, Butch Hancock, Peter Case, Tom Russell and the Austin band, Loose Diamonds, when he murdered the piano. What scared me wasn't seeing someone destroy a musical instrument on stage (I'd seen plenty of that over the years) but the look in Terry's eyes. These weren't the eyes of Terry Allen, world renowned sculptor-legendary songwriter and west Texas visionary, but these were the cold eyes of Jabo, the homesick, killer pachuco from JUAREZ.

JUAREZ, Terry Allen's first masterpiece, is one of the great "songwriter" records. Originally recorded and released in the early 1970's, it stands equal with other mandatory 70's songwriter classics like Dylan's BLOOD ON THE TRACKS and Randy Newman's GOOD OLD BOYS. And it stands equal (or above) most songwriter records made in the decades since. Like Dylan's and Newman's work, the songs on JUAREZ work on so many levels that they defy easy categorization or neat explanations. Like old, anonymous folk ballads, the narrative songs on JUAREZ tell one story but inside the seemingly simple story is a universe of other stories, myths, lovers, barrooms, highways, dead ends and meanings. You can appreciate each song on the level of "That's a great love song" or "That's a good drinking song" or, if you're so disposed, delve into their deeper meanings. Is JUAREZ a commentary on the history of the wild west, the conquest and colonization of the Americas, the alienation and dislocation of modern American life or . . . all of the above?

There are many moments on JUAREZ that are as scary as that crashing Italian piano. "There Oughta Be A Law Agains't Sunny Southern California" is one of the baddest bad boy ballads to come out of the still wild west.
But there are also bittersweet moments of honky tonk existentialism - "La Despedida" stuns me with it's sad beauty every time I hear it - as well as moments of transcendental humor like "Writing On Rocks Across The USA." There are even songs that mix the humor and violence with touching innocence and desperate passion.
Not an easy task. Just ask any poet or songwriter.

Another reason JUAREZ was so powerful when first recorded (and is still as intense today) is the simplicity and intimacy of the recording. With only his words and piano, plus some excellent subtle guitar and mandolin accompaniment, Terry Allen manages to paint the border town whorehouses, the small mountain town trailer park and the dark desert highway with all the vivid colors of a Maynard Dixon painting. The sparseness of the arrangements allows his voice to inhabit every character with a credibility that might have been lessened with more elaborate settings (although the the 2 beautiful new songs, included on this cd, use more instrumentation, they manage to keep the original recording's intimate mood intact). Like Hank Williams or Robert Johnson, Terry Allen is capable of making you believe every word he sings. The anger, disappointment, lust, loneliness, love, hope and hopelessness of the characters Jabo, Chic, Spanish Alice and Sailor come fully to life by way of Allen's "been there and back" vocals. As I saw in his eyes as he killed a piano on stage, perhaps the JUAREZ characters possess Terry as much as he possesses them.

JUAREZ is an intense of a work of art or poetry or music (or whatever you want to call it) by a master songwriter. It tells a story with maybe no ending, with perhaps no noble heroes and possibly no uplifting moral to learned but, none the less, it's a story that had to be told. Just like that piano had to be destroyed one night in Italy.

JOHNNY SHINES - SKULL AND CROSSBONES BLUES - Hightone 2003

Johnny Shines was, without a doubt, one of the greatest blues singers that ever lived. Like Roy Brown or Big Joe Turner, he could've sung opera if fate had pointed him down that road.

Shines was also an amazing guitarist capable of both weaving intricate, complex patterns on acoustic guitar or slashing his way through tough Chicago electric shuffles. The influence of Robert Johnson is in his playing (as the included version of "Crossroads Blues" shows), and that's to be expected because of Shine's well documented close relationship with Johnson, but Shine's off beat rhythms, clever riffs and dead-on slide work were, like his vocals, utterly his own.

When you say "blues" to most people they tend to think of one or two types of blues music and one type of blues singer. The stereotypical blues singer is supposed to be the hard living, hard drinking, illiterate, itinerant, "sold my soul to the devil" type. But just as there are numerous styles and shades of blues music, there are just as many types of blues singers. Johnny Shines was a hard working, educated man who had wide interests and dreamed of seeing Africa. He felt deeply that the blues stereotypes negatively affected the profound influence that the blues had on American music and culture.

Like J.B. Lenoir and Skip James, Johnny Shines didn't fit any preconceived mold of what a blues musician should be or what he should write and sing about. And sadly, like all the greatest blues singers, his kind will never be seen again. Fortunately for those of us who had the great fortune to see him perform when he was alive and especially for those who didn't have that unique opportunity, we can, thanks to this Hightone reissue, still listen to the pure blues of a true original.

RAY CHARLES - GENIUS AND SOUL: THE 50th ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION - Rhino Records 1997

I rode in a freight elevator once with Ray Charles. It was several years ago in San Francisco where an odd variety of artists from Lou Rawls to Ed McMahon to George Burns to my band at the time, The Blasters, were performing at some beer company convention. The only other person in the elevator was Ray's road manager who nodded his head silently as I got on. His serious, businesslike demeanor seemed to say, "That's right kid, you're standing next to THEE RAY CHARLES! And he doesn't care to hear or make any small talk because he's only here to sing 'America The Beautiful,' get paid and split. So be cool and we'll let you ride with us and you can tell your grandkids about it when you get old."

Awestruck, I stood staring at Ray who was smiling and humming a melody to himself. I tried to think of something original to say but what could I possibly tell him that he'd never heard before? "Ah, gee, Mister Charles, I'm your biggest fan!" or "Brother Ray! What's shakin' baby?" I don't think so.

Maybe I could have told Ray about when I was 14 in 1970 and the corner drugstore was selling cut-outs of his old ABC albums for 69 cents, and how I bought two or three of them a week until I owned them all. No. Nobody wants to hear about their records being in cut-out bins. Maybe I should have told him how much I learned about American Music and songwriting from listening to those old records and reading the writer's credits. How he made me see that the same tough blue soul in a song written by Percy "The Poet Laureate Of The Blues" Mayfield could be found in one written by country singer Buck Owens or one by Broadway's Harold Arlen. How, more than just about anyone else in the history of American pop music, he had bulldozed the walls separating blues, gospel, country, jazz, r+b, Tin Pan Alley and show tunes (What other artist could claim to have made records with jazzers Milt Jackson and Betty Carter as well as bluesman Guitar Slim, soul diva Aretha Franklin AND country crooner George Jones?). And he did it without changing his unique vocal style which was based as much in the church as it was in the juke joint. Would he really care that I based my approach to songwriting on his eclectic philosophy and how much solace I got from his example when people tried to pin me down to playing or writing in only one style?

Did Ray Charles really need some stranger in an elevator telling him how much of a revolutionary he's been in a country so musically, culturally and racially segregated? Or how his music represents everything many of us believe America is ideally supposed to be: open-minded, compassionate, independent, adventurous. Willing to explore the new without discarding what was good in the old.

I just kept my mouth shut and listened to Ray's humming.

Should I have told him about driving my family and neighbors crazy on my student tenor sax, honking and screeching while trying to learn his snaky alto sax intro to "(Night Time Is) The Right Time?" Maybe he'd relate to how I sat up until sunrise one adolescent night listening to "I Can't Stop Loving You" over and over after my first girlfriend dumped me? What difference would it make to him that on the day I turned 21, and I walked into a air-conditioned bar for the first time on a miserably hot afternoon, that the first thing I did, after buying my first legal drink was, play his version of "Ruby" on the jukebox and make a silent toast to adulthood and to Ray for being there to initiate me.

The elevator doors opened and before I'd said a word Ray and his road manager were out the door. I followed them out, watching as they were immediately surrounded by smiling faces and out-stretched hands, everyone saying things like "Mister Charles, I'm your biggest fan" and "Brother Ray! What's shakin' baby?" I still kick myself for not saying anything to him but I like to think that Ray Charles knew what he means to all of us without some kid in a freight elevator having to tell him.

And, oh, yeah, I'll definitely tell my grandkids.

VARIOUS ARTISTS - ROCKIN' BONES - 1950's Punk And Rockabilly - Rhino Records 2006

Rockabilly's always been just another branch on the old folk music tree. I know some folk purists (and rockabilly purists as well) disagree with me but, like other post World War 2 folk music offshoots - urban blues, rural bluegrass, suburban singer-songwriters, for example - early rockabilly grew directly from the old time blues, ballads and breakdowns that are the rich roots of our folk music. A rockabilly band blasting the roof off some beer joint along the highway is just as much an integral part of America's folk music history as any acoustic guitar strumming singer-songwriter singing in a college town coffeehouse.

It's been more than 50 years since the first rockabilly records were released and rockabilly is still too raw or too simple or too loud or too fast or too dangerous for some people to appreciate. To me, though, because it has retained all those impolite "negatives," rockabilly remains as gloriously primitive as any true folk music should be.

Liner notes for FREDDIE KING: LIVE AT THE ELECTRIC BALLROOM 1974 Shout Factory 2006

I was a skinny 14 year-old kid when I finally got up the guts to speak to Freddie King.

It was back in 1970 or 71, and he had just finished blowing the roof off of the Los Angeles blues/folk club, the Ash Grove. He was standing in the lounge area talking to one of his band members and seemed relaxed and somewhat approachable. Back then I was one of those kids who actually read the small print on records that listed who wrote the song, and I had to know who Billy Myles was. His name was on one of King's signature songs,
"Have You Ever Loved A Woman?"

I have to admit that I was scared to death as I slowly walked toward him. By that time, my brother, Phil, and I had seen a few Freddie King shows and we were always devastated by his performances. We'd collected his old King/Federal 45's and out-of-print LPs, and as great as they were, they didn't quite match the sheer power of seeing him live. First of all there was his physical presence. He was a big man who dwarfed his Gibson guitar and dominated the stage like few artists I've seen before or since (Big Joe Turner was one of the only performers who matched King in that department). You would never want to be on his bad side.

Then there was Freddie King's total mastery of his instrument. His playing was melodic yet propulsive, tasteful yet overwhelming, technically perfect yet emotionally pure. I'll never forget witnessing a jaw-dropping guitar duel between Freddie and B.B. King at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. They swapped stunning chorus after chorus until they fought to a mutually admiring standstill. I've never heard B.B. play better but I don't think I'm wrong in my opinion that Freddie was still holding back some of his abilities out of respect and affection for B.B.

Freddie King smiled at me as I approached him. His hair was still styled in a perfect processed pompadour and he wore a dark sharkskin suit. As he reached down to gently shake my small nervous hand, I stuttered something about how many times I'd seen him and how great a guitarist I though he was. He thanked me, and then I asked him who Billy Myles was. "Was he another great guitarist I should listen to?"

Freddie King started laughing and looked at his band member and said, "Can you believe this boy asking me about old Billy Myles." I felt embarrassed and apologized for asking such an apparently stupid question. Then Freddie King said something I'll always treasure.

"It's not a stupid question, son." He said. "Billy Myles was a friend of mine who wrote some songs for me. He was my friend just like you're my friend." I walked away on cloud nine.

To this day whenever I hear Freddie King, I'm still moved by his incredibly fierce talents as a guitarist (not to mention what a strong, soulful, expressive vocalist he was) and reminded of what a gentle and kind man he was to a boy he'd never met before.