Dave Alvin
Dave Alvin (born November 11, 1955 in Downey , California ) is an American alternative country , roots rock , blues and folk musician. Characteristic for him are his deep baritone voice and the conceptual change between folk-based releases in the singer-songwriter style and blues-heavy with rock music- typical accompanying band.
Life
Childhood and youth
Dave Alvin grew up with his two year older brother Phil in Downey, a suburb of Los Angeles in the county of the same name . Nana Alvin, the mother, was Conservative Catholic. Cass Alvin, the father, a first generation descendant of Polish immigrants, came from South Bend , Indiana and had moved to California during the Great Depression to work as a steel worker . During the Second World War he worked as a photographer for the reconnaissance corps and became one of the co-founders of the local steelworkers' union after the war . Political issues were commonplace in the Alvin brothers' home; likewise a critical attitude towards news and the associated awareness that things usually have different sides. Musical interest was also present in the family. Both Dave and Phil were enthusiastic about old rockabilly and vintage country records as teenagers, as well as live recordings by blues musicians like T-Bone Walker , Big Joe Turner and Lee Allen .
The two Alvin brothers found the invisible border between the suburbs east of Los Angeles such as El Monte , Compton , Long Beach , Norwalk , Pomona and Downey and the more glamorous west of the mega-metropolis separating - as Dave later recalled with Hollywood , Beverly Hills , Burbank , Santa Monica , Culver City and Los Angeles itself. Since the favorite blues greats often played in Los Angeles and sometimes even lived there, the two of them oriented themselves towards LA at an early age. The two attended their first live concert in 1969 - when they were 13 and 16 respectively: at Ashgrove, a live club in Hollywood on Melrose Avenue. In parallel to this interest in music, Dave had temporary ambitions for short stories and poetry . Role models were underground local heroes like Charles Bukowski , Gerald Locklin, Elliot Fried and Gerald Haslam. He also wrote prose himself and occasionally did his own readings. The musical interests of the two Alvin brothers expanded from the mid-1970s to include punk bands such as The Weirdos, The Screamers and The Skulls. Their music, so Alvin later, was something different from the blues, but the concert-goers were of the same age.
The Blasters
The founding of the Blasters took place in 1979. Founding members were Phil Alvin , Bill Bateman and John Bazz; Dave Alvin joined them later. The band combined the attitude of punk with blues and rockabilly-heavy roots rock. The Blasters quickly became a popular act in the local scene. The first major success was the piece Marie, Marie - a title that was picked up in 1980 by rock 'n' roll singer Shakin 'Stevens and made a success. The use of the song Dark Night in the film From Dusk Till Dawn by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez also contributed to the band's reputation .
Despite their reputation in the local scene and a solid fan base, the Blasters failed to translate their success into mainstream success. One of the reasons for this was the chronically tense relationship between Phil and Dave Alvin - a condition that was expressed, among other things, in uncoordinated, contrary statements in interviews. In order not to let the dispute escalate, the two established a kind of division of labor within the band: Dave was allowed to collect the credits for the lyrics for himself; Phil, on the other hand, took care of the lead vocals . Despite the agreements made, the aversions between the two finally led to Dave Alvin's quarrel and leaving the group for more than a decade without having any contact with his brother. Phil soon disbanded the Blasters, graduated with a master's degree in mathematics and artificial intelligence, and reactivated the band briefly in the late 1980s with changing line-ups.
Solo career
During his time with the Blasters, Dave Alvin had already pursued various side activities: Folk sessions with members of the local punk band X , from which the formation The Knitters later emerged, a lead guitar guest appearance with X himself and collaboration with Chris D. 's Gothic punk group The Flesh Eaters . Partly because of his baritone voice, which he found only partially suitable for rock singing, he decided to embark on a career as a singer-songwriter and alternative country musician and temporarily relocated the center of his life to Nashville . His first solo album Romeo's Escape - musically a mixture of country and blues - was released in 1987 by Columbia sub-label Epic . The intention of Epic Records to bring Alvin into position as the label's own counterpoint to the roots rocker Steve Earle, who was successful at the time , failed, however. Romeo's Escape got some good reviews, but it sold poorly. As a result, Epic Records split from Dave Alvin.
The following years were a difficult phase, marked by setbacks, both personally and in terms of music career. Due to meningitis , which eventually led to a stay of several weeks in the hospital, Alvin was forced to take a break. He saw his singer-songwriting career as a failure after the flop of Romeo's Escape , but returning ruefully to the Blasters was out of the question for him. In the following years he founded a loose live formation with Mojo Nixon and Dick Montana . Under the name The Pleasure Boys, they completed a tour that was repeated in 1993 and documented with the CD Live in Las Vegas . Alvin succinctly characterized the sound and aspirations of the Pleasure Boys as a "Las Vegas revue by people who are generally not invited to Las Vegas ".
The turn towards success brought Alvin's second solo album Blue Blvd., on which the well-known saxophonist Lee Allen also played. Alvin's composition Long White Cadillac provided the financial and renowned technical cushion for the publication - a piece that made Dwight Yoakam a veritable hit parade. In addition, some above-average pieces had come together for the second album - for example Andersonville by Asa Powell, a folk song ballad about the notorious southern states - Andersonville prisoner of war camp during the American Civil War and Blue Wing by Tom Russell . Was published Blue Blvd. at the California-based independent label Hightone Records.
Although Alvin's financial position as a musician remained precarious for a while, the sales were enough to restore his position on the roots rock scene. Roots rock-dominated pieces also offered the follow-up album Museum of Heart (1993). The change between rock or blues-based albums with a corresponding backing band and acoustic music-dominated singer-songwriter albums with folk and country developed into a kind of distinctive feature in the years that followed. The Museum of Heart was followed by three albums of singer-songwriter pieces: King of California (1994), Blackjack David (1998) and Public Domain - Songs from the Wild West (2000). Public Domain - a new recording of old traditionals and southern folk pieces such as Shenandoah - has received praise not only from critics. In addition, the release received a Grammy Awards for best contemporary folk album.
The long hospital stay and the death of their father in 2000 led to a rapprochement between Dave Alvin and his brother Phil. In 2002 the Blasters briefly re-formed for a west coast tour. With his own live formation The Guilty Men (often also: The Guilty Ones) he released the live album Out of California in 2002 . Ashgrove followed as a regular studio release in 2004 - a heavily blues-influenced album, the title track of which referred to the live club in which Dave and his brother had made closer acquaintance with the blues scene on the US west coast . The new album went hand in hand with a change to the Yep Roc Records label, which specializes in root rock . The follow-up album West Of The West from 2006 was characterized by quieter pieces. In 2008 there was another stylistic change. Alvin asked a friend, Pedal Steel guitarist Cindy Cashdollar, if she could put together an acoustic band for him. The result was the Guilty Women - an exclusively female backing band. The collaboration with the Guilty Woman not only led to a number of gigs, but also to a new album , heavily influenced by Zydeco , Cajun and bluegrass : Dave Alvin and The Guilty Women (2009).
The 2011 follow-up release Eleven Eleven was again strongly influenced by blues, boogie and rock tones. With What's Up With Your Brother? it contained a duet piece with Phil. A musical result of the rapprochement that had meanwhile taken place was the 2014 album Common Ground - Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin Play and Sing the Songs of Big Bill Broonzy . Common Ground not only reached number one on the Billboard Bluescharts, the album was also nominated for a Grammy - but missed the award in favor of the recently deceased blues legend Johnny Winter . Another co-production by the two Alvin brothers followed in 2015: the album Lost Time .
During his music career, Dave has worked as a producer for Tom Russell, The Derailers, Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys, Bobby Rush , Tom Waits , John Mellencamp , Little Milton and The Knitters, among others . As a session or live musician, he played together with old rockbilly star Sonny Burgess, as well as blues and country musicians such as Ramblin 'Jack Elliott , Kathy Moffatt and Syd Straw. Pieces by the Blasters and Dave Alvin solo were used in the film From Dusk Till Dawn and the TV series The Sopranos , The Wire , True Blood and Justified . In the latter, not only his interpretation of the Southern folk ballad You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive was used. In one episode of the series, Alvin and band completed a music bar appearance in which they played the track Harlan County Line .
In 2011 Alvin took part in the music documentary Troubadour Blues .
Musical style and reviews
On the occasion of an interview about the renewed collaboration between the two Alvin brothers in 2015, Dave Alvin basically described himself as a “blues guy”. The strong affinity for this genre of music is also obvious to him because at the time of the Great Depression all kinds of people moved to California and the legendary blues musicians almost played in the neighborhood. He characterized his old band, the Blasters, in 2004 as an attempt to reactivate old sounds: “With the Blasters, we tried to write songs that could have been from 1957 or 1962.” He commented on his attempts at writing in the 1970s goes like this: “Everyone I knew then wrote poetry. The women I slept with wrote poetry and the guys I got drunk with. I read my poems in Santa Barbara and Long Beach, but Phil had to drive me because I had to take courage before the readings. "
The combination of roots rock, blues and country cultivated by Dave Alvin has been classified as noteworthy by a number of specialist media. Jazzthing characterized the blues album by the two Alvin brothers, released in 2013, as a well-turned out adaptation: “The Blasters brothers Dave & Phil Alvin trace the testament of the versatile Broonzy, serve happily clattering hokum with piano to guitars, hit with an electrically amplified combo heavy boogies and unabashedly bring one or the other Big Bill classic to rockabillyland. ” The site puremusic wrote on the occasion of a review of West of the West: “ Dave Alvin grew up on the west coast of the USA and became one of the leading practitioners of roots rock . Apart from a short but touching flirtation with Appalachia in the public domain, he stayed West Coast to the core. ” The website country.de found only conditional words of praise for the album Dave Alvin and The Guilty Woman , but noted that the quality this formation would come across much better at live performances.
The Roots Rock magazine No Depression highlighted the style of the lyrics in a story about Dave Alvin in 2004. A typical narrative scheme of Alvin is to slip into the biography of the portrayed characters and thereby take their point of view. In Out of Control, for example, he becomes a drug dealer , whose girlfriend finds her way through as a con artist . In other songs, he takes on the role of the arsonist , the unfortunate husband , the gold digger , the civil war prisoner or that of Hank Williams . Taking the point of view of the main character in the song always makes it clear that the interpreter is not the center of the world. Dave Alvin's oeuvre summed up No Depression as follows: “There is a strange mixture of fatigue and resilience in Alvin's singing, as if the years of low-pay small club gigs had taken their toll - even if they did he was inspired. (…) Alvin has created his own share of great art, even if he never received the recognition like Bruce Springsteen or Elvis Costello - just as his heroes Percy Mayfield and Willie Dixon were never acclaimed by the masses like Buddy Holly or Burt Bacharach . "
Discography
With the blasters
- 1980: American Music (Rollin 'Rock)
- 1981: The Blasters (Slash)
- 1982: Over There / Live At The Venue, London (Slash / Warner Bros. Records)
- 1983: Non-Fiction (Slash / Warner Bros. Records)
- 1985: Hard Line (Slash / Warner Bros. Records)
Solo albums
| year | title |
Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes) |
Remarks | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 US
|
Country
|
|||
| 1987 | Romeo's Escape |
US116 (13 weeks) US |
Country60 (7 weeks) Country |
Epic; as Every Night About This Time published
|
| 2011 | Eleven Eleven |
US159 (1 week) US |
- |
Yep Roc Records
|
| 2014 | Common Ground |
US144 (1 week) US |
- |
Yep Roc Records; with Phil Alvin
|
| 2018 | Downey to Lubbock | - |
Country41 (1 week) Country |
with Jimmie Dale Gilmore
|
More solo albums
- 1991: Blue Blvd (Hightone Records)
- 1993: Museum of Heart (Hightone Records)
- 1994: King of California (Hightone Records)
- 1996: Interstate City (Hightone Records)
- 1998: Blackjack David (Hightone Records)
- 2001: Public Domain: Songs from the Wild Land (Hightone Records)
- 2004: Ashgrove (Yep Roc Records)
- 2006: West of the West (Yep Roc Records)
- 2009: Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women (Yep Roc Records)
- 2015: Lost Time (Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin; Yep Roc Records)
Live albums / compilations
- 1992: Tennessee Border (Sonny Burgess & Dave Alvin; Hightone Records)
- 1993: Live in Las Vegas (with The Pleasure Barons; Hightone Records)
- 2002: Out in California (Hightone Records)
- 2005: The Great American Music Galaxy (Yep Roc Records)
- 2011: Live From Austin TX (New West Records)
- 2015: Live in Long Beach 1997 (Dave Alvin, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Billy Boy Arnold & Joe Louis Walker; RockBeat Records)
Singles
- 1986: Interchords (Epic)
- 1987: Fourth Of July (Demon Records)
- 1987: New Tattoo / Border Radio (Epic)
- 1988: Every Night About Thins Time (Epic)
- 2011: Harlan County Line (Yep Roc Records)
- 2012: Beautiful City 'Cross the River (Yep Roc Records)
- 2013: You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive (Yep Roc Records)
- 2014: Songs From Common Ground (Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin; Yep Roc Records)
- 2017: Hard Travellin ' (Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin; Yep Roc Records)
Sampler contributions
- 2003: The Executioner's Last Songs Vol. 2 + 3 (Bloodshot Records)
- 2003: Lonesome, On'ry And Mean: A Tribute To Waylon Jennings (Dualtone)
- 2009: Man Of Somebody's Dreams: A Tribute To Chris Gaffney (Yep Roc Records)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Dave Alvin , Mark Deming, biography post at allmusic.com, accessed on October 30, 2017 (engl.)
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Dave Alvin - Do look back , No Depression, June 30, 2004 (Engl.)
- ↑ a b c Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin with The Guilty Ones , artist presentation on the website of Agentur Berthold Seliger, accessed October 30, 2017
- ↑ Dave Alvin: Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin with The Guilty Ones ( Memento of the original from November 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Artist description at Lucerne Blues Festival, accessed October 30, 2017
- ↑ Dave Alvin: Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women , Mark Deming, review at allmusic.com, access: October 30, 2017.
- ↑ a b Dave Alvin , Mongrel Music, accessed October 30, 2017.
- ↑ Dave Alvin Interviewed: Brothers in arms, again , Graham Reid, elsewhere.co.nz, February 16, 2015 (Eng.)
- ↑ West of the West - Dave Alvin , Michael Hansen, puremusic.com, access: October 30, 2017.
- ↑ Dave Alvin: Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women , Thomas Waldherr, country.de, July 1, 2009
- ↑ Chart sources: US
Web links
- official website of Dave Alvin
- Biographical article at allmusic.com
- Dave Alvin at discogs.com (Engl.)
- Dave Alvin - Do look back . Long article about Dave Alvin on the No Depression web portal (2004)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Alvin, Dave |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American country and folk musician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 11, 1955 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Downey , USA |