Blues forge Gilmore-Alvin team
Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Dave Alvin grew up 1,100 miles apart in Lubbock, Texas, and Downey, Calif., respectively, but their musical paths crossed long before they met each other nearly 30 years ago.
The duo’s first album, “Downey to Lubbock” (Yep Roc), christens that shared legacy even as it brings out some hidden corners in both artists’ pasts, particularly Gilmore’s.
It turns out Gilmore can blast the blues, in addition to his warbling touch with a country or folk tune. Before hooking up with his fellow Lubbock mavericks Butch Hancock and Joe Ely in the cosmic-cowboy band the Flatlanders in the early ’70s, Gilmore was a solo act who finger-picked the blues and wailed on a harmonica.
“Elmore James, Blind Lemon Jefferson — that was actually my favorite music,” Gilmore says. “That didn’t stop me from loving country and folk, which I became identified with, but the blues influence was always a part of me, and Dave picked up on that.”
In a separate interview, Alvin said he discovered Gilmore’s affinity for deep blues on an acoustic tour the duo did last year. “We were just trading songs that we knew, and he was comfortable pulling out people like Blind Lemon. Even when we weren’t doing blues songs per se, his phrasing made it clear that he’s a blues singer,” Alvin says.
“I started thinking if we make a record, we’re gonna lean that way. He’d done elements of that on other records but hadn’t jumped into the deep end.”
As much younger men, Gilmore and Alvin both swam in the deep end at the legendary Ash Grove, the Los Angeles club that hosted blues giants such as Lightnin’ Hopkins, Son House, and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Gilmore’s wanderlust took him to California in the late ’60s as he began exploring the world outside of Texas, and he became a Lightnin’ Hopkins disciple.
The same transformation occurred a couple of years later when the 13-year-old Alvin frequented the club with his brother Phil, with whom he would later form the Los Angeles roots-punk band the Blasters.
“The freedom of expression, almost nobody has it to that degree,” Gilmore says of Hopkins. “Among my musician circles, everyone is aware of him, but he flies totally under the radar for just everybody else. He had such a deep influence on so many of the most important musicians. I listen to his records, I go, OK, he doesn’t care about time, tuning, all the conventional stuff. What he cares about is intensity. His music is so visceral. Nobody can copy it.”
Hopkins and the Ash Grove become a touchstone for a generation of Los Angeles-area kids who incorporated the blues into their music, including the Alvins, Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and countless others. The connection became apparent when Gilmore and Alvin toured last year, neither artist knowing the club was such a crucial part of each of their pasts. But their aesthetic common ground turned out to be even wider.
“Every night of that tour was different — we’d start and end with a song the audience knew, and in between it would be ‘Name That Tune,’?” Alvin says. “We’d go from Sam Cooke to Merle Haggard to Blind Lemon to Butch Hancock, and then one night Jimmie turns to me and says, ‘The next one’s in G’ and he starts into (the 1967 Youngbloods hit) ‘Get Together.’ It’s one of those songs that is so hammered into our consciousness that it becomes meaningless. But with Jimmie’s voice and sincerity in reading those lyrics, it’s a brand-new song. When he sang the first line, I’m thinking, ‘We have to record this.’?”
Alvin pulled his band together for the recording session in California, and the rapport they developed on stage flourished. Gil-more brings a staggering ferocity to Hopkins’ “Buddy Brown’s Blues,” a crackling strut to Lloyd Price’s “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” and a lowdown ruefulness and regret to the Memphis Jug Band’s “K.C. Moan.”
“I was pushing Jimmie to stretch — I wanted to capture that coyote howl in his voice,” Alvin says. Gilmore pushed Alvin a little as well, as he urged the guitarist to bring the Blue Cheer volume and drive to “K.C. Moan.”
Alvin laughs. “I wanted to keep it away from being too — for lack of a better word — too much of an Americana record,” he says. “The overarching thrust is let’s make a rockin’ little blues record. Certain songs aren’t blues songs, but overall, that’s the feel.”
Gilmore was happy to dig in. “I think Dave appreciated the range of my taste and capabilities maybe more than anyone I’ve worked with,” he says.
The title track, one of two originals on the album, brings everything full circle with the pair trading verses. It’s part autobiography, part tall tale as told by two blues acolytes still “livin’ on dreams and gasoline, and somehow still survivin’ on Advil, NyQuil and nicotine,” as Alvin sings in one verse.
“Touring together at some point, we came to the realization that Muddy (Waters) and Merle (Haggard) are gone, Chuck Berry, B.B. King, Bo Diddley, George Jones are gone, and on and on,” Alvin says.
“We’re kind of those guys in a way, still going out on the road, playing every night for 40-plus years. It’s kind of a heavy responsibility on our shoulders. We’re becoming those guys. Not that we’re as good, but we are the roots musicians on the road.”
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