Dave Alvin
Ashgrove
Yep Roc Records
By Marianne Ebertowski
 Ashgrove,
Dave Alvin's first album for Yep Roc, is also his first album
with exclusively original material since Blackjack David
six years ago. It's an intriguing mixture of acoustic singer-songwriter
material and the sort of rampaging electric blues-rock Alvin
used to play with the Blasters in the late seventies and early
eighties. Multi-instrumentalist Greg Leisz, who had previously
done excellent jobs with Alvin's Blackjack David and King
of California (1994), produces the album. The songs on Ashgrove
mostly contemplate growing up, growing old and dying, a pensive
mood apparently triggered by the recent death of Alvin's father.
Interestingly enough, it's not Alvin's touring band, the Guilty
Men, whom he gathered around him at the Winslow Court studio
in Hollywood. Instead, he picked a rhythm section consisting
of bassist Bob Glaub (Jackson Brown, John Fogerty) and drummer
Don Heffington (Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris), allegedly because
he and Glaub and Heffington and Leisz shared the same musical
and geographical roots. As kids they all used to hang out at
the Ashgrove, a legendary folk/blues club in L.A.
Fortunately, the title song, an ode to the Ashgrove club that
opens the album is not representative of what follows. "Ashgrove"
is a rather uninspiring stomping blues-rocker that will not really
shake anybody's world. I guess the club deserves a better song
than this and some day maybe someone will write it. However,
the listener who decides to yank the album out of the CD player
after the first tune couldn't be more wrong, because there is
some excellent stuff to follow.
First, there's "Rio Grande," a song co-written with
Tom Russell who already recorded it on his 2001 release Borderline.
It's the story of a man looking for his lost love and it has
Tom Russell's handwriting all over it. However, Dave Alvin's
interpretation is powerful and Leisz's steel guitar gives the
sad story an extra sad touch.
It gets sadder in "Black Sky," a quiet blues-rock
with some excellent guitar solos:
I wake up every mornin'
Try the best I can
To make it one more day
In a world I don't understand
Now the sun, baby,'s shinin'
But there's darkness on the land
And I can't find my way, baby
Unless you take my hand
Well, if that doesn't ring a bell or two, dear listener, life
has been treating you unfairly kind so far.
Perhaps you will recall your first transistor radio that took
you through all the good and bad days of your childhood and youth.
That is exactly what "Nine Volt Heart," co-written
with Rod Hodges of the New Orleans band the Iguanas is all about.
It's a nice soulful song with jangling guitars and a "radio-friendly"
pop-appeal.
We're back to rock bottom with "Out Of Control,"
the story of blue-collar life getting, well, out of control,
because it would be unbearable otherwise. While this is maybe
not the most exciting song from a musical point of view, it hits
home hard when you come from "there" and it should
cause some pain to anyone who has acquired or kept an ounce of
empathy.
For me the highlight of the album, however, is "Everett
Ruess," the story of a young man who graduated from Hollywood
High School in January 1931, aged 16, and immediately went on
his first trip into the wilderness. In November 1934, he did
it again. He was seen riding into Escalante (in southern Utah)
on his burro and continuing southeast along the Hole in the Rock
Trail, which had been blazed by Mormon pioneers in 1879. Nobody
knows what happened to him after that. He mysteriously disappeared
at the tender age of 20, but his legend lives on. A fascinating
story turned into an engaging song of gentle anger by Dave Alvin:
Well, I hate your crowded cities
With your sad and hopeless mobs
And I hate your grand cathedrals
Where you try to trap God
Cause I know God is here in the canyons
With the rattlesnakes and the pinion pines
And they never found my body, boys
Or understand my mind.
The other highlight of the album is "The Man in the Bed,"
a song written from the perspective of an old man in a hospital
bed who revolts against his inevitable situation:
Now the nurse over there doesn't know
That I ain't some helpless old so-and-so
I could have broken her heart not that long ago
Now the nurse over there doesn't know.
Beat that or remain forever silent.
Not every song on this album will live with me forever, but
"Everett Ruess" and "The Man in the Bed"
are two of the most beautiful and touching songs ever written,
and that's not a bad score at all. Ashgrove is an album
that radiates warmth and empathy, rare qualities in human beings
or so it seems sometimes. Everybody should play it three times
a day just to stay mentally healthy and take some vitamin pills
to go with it. It's the best diet I can recommend at the moment!
www.davealvin.com
www.yeproc.com
Contact Marianne Ebertowski at ebertowski-at-rockzilla.net
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