It’s not every day a Grammy-winning
artist comes to Springfield. In fact, it’s not even every
year.
Dave Alvin won the award for Best Traditional
Folk Album of 2000 for Public Domain, a collection of obscure folk songs. He began his
musical adventures in early childhood, listening to old 78s and 45s
with his brother, Phil, in their hometown of Downey, Calif., about
25 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
During their teenage years, the brothers left
the record player behind for local taverns and live music.
Fortunately for us, the future roots guitarists and
singer/songwriters couldn’t find decent work while struggling
with early career choices.
“Used to be, when I was a kid, there
were blue-collar jobs,” Dave Alvin recounts. “Later and
especially now, nothing seems stable, so I figured I might as well
become a musician.” He started his professional career in the
early ’80s with the Blasters, an American roots-music band
fronted by his brother. He then joined the Los Angeles
punk/pop/roots group X for a few years.
Around 1989, Alvin was at a low point in his
solo career. “I thought, ‘What else am I skilled to do?
Nothing,’” he recalls. About that time, Tom Russell
wrote and released “Blue Wing.” “I flipped over
that song, and I thought, ‘I’m going keep on playing
until I can write a song as good as that.’”
That inspiration has led to several albums of
critically acclaimed music, including his 2004 Yep Roc release Ashgrove.
Alvin’s tunes are often filled with stories that seem
sometimes autobiographical but other times, well, we hope not.
“Songs may not be exactly about your life, but you go to your
subconscious, root around and find the unpleasant things about
yourself to write about,” he says. In the CD liner notes of Ashgrove, Alvin thanks
Johnny “Guitar” Watson, a blues guitarist of the 1960s
and ’70s, for inspiration. “I saw him play when I was
kid at what was probably the craziest double bill ever,” he
says. “It was Johnny ‘Guitar’ and Rev. Gary
Davis. It hit me they were the opposite but playing the same thing
— the same notes and structure from the same
tradition.”
“My whole career has been based on that
night,” he says after a pause, “playing the hard,
angry, edgy blues and the almost gentle acoustic blues off of
each other.”
Dave Alvin and the Guilty Men perform at the
Underground City Tavern (700 E. Adams St., 217-789-1530) at 8 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 13.
Tickets are available at Recycled Records
(217-522-5122) for $12 or for $15 at the door.
This article appears in Feb 10-16, 2005.
