| February 11th, 2005 10:53 AM |
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| Barney Fife |
I just started my Dave Alvin mini marathon of four nights in a row last night, so I'm happy.
Dave Alvin, Feb. 10, 2005, Blueberry Hill’s Duck Room, St. Louis, Missouri
My pastoral buddy Don and I went to Blueberry Hill and had sandwiches and drinks before the show then Jimbo Jockstrap met us there in the Duck Room. There sure were a lot of old people in the audience! Where were all the youngsters – tucked into bed already at 10:00 on a Thursday night?
Well, it was a normally great night for Dave and his Guilty Men. There’s an excellent synthesis of talent in the collective band members. Dave plays like he has fun every night of this labor of love he does. He decided to take his old Strat out on the road this time. I was back in my groove of being front and center for Mr. Alvin and his excellent show.
A couple highlights were: Dave playing the theme from Rogers and Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things” in the middle of Out of Control and Chris Miller absolutely kicking ass on Dry River making his steel guitar howl!!
Is this Love? [Chris Gaffney]
All Night Worker [Chris Gaffney]
Out in California
Sinful Daughter
Abilene
Out of Control (with My Favorite Things)
Little Honey -> Who Do You Love?
Dry River
Somewhere in Time -> Ashgrove
East Virginia Blues
4th of July
encore:
Blackjack David
band intro instrumental -> Marie, Marie -> So Long Baby, Goodbye
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| February 14th, 2005 01:57 PM |
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| Barney Fife |
Dave Alvin, Feb. 11, 2005, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, IL
It was a competent but too short of performance last night. It was about 15 minutes shorter than the previous night’s show in St. Louis. We thought maybe he was saving up his energy for tonight’s show. PolkSalad and I ran into a couple of old friends at the show, one got drunk as usual and started harassing some women, but that’s another story.
I liked the fact that Dave mixed up the set list at least a little bit; I hadn’t heard him do Long White Cadillac in a couple of years.
It Tears Me Up [Chris Gaffney]
All Night Worker [Chris Gaffney]
So Long Baby, Goodbye
Sinful Daughter
Haley’s Comet
Out of Control (with My Favorite Things)
Abilene
Trouble Bound
Dry River
Somewhere in Time -> Ashgrove
East Virginia Blues
encore:
Long White Cadillac -> band intro instrumental -> Marie, Marie -> Everything’s Gonna Be Alright
Photos by PolkSalad
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| February 14th, 2005 02:01 PM |
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| Barney Fife |
Dave Alvin, Feb. 12, 2005, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, IL
Dave continued to mix things up a bit last night. He came out on stage at the end of Chris Gaffney’s first instead of second song, and pulled Blasters’ stalwart Red Rose out of his vast songbook and introducing it by dedicating it to that first girl way back when who broke his heart - wherever she is! At the end of the regular set they played American Music which is special because it doesn’t get played very often these days and is a great fuggin song about the heritage of our culture.
The past three nights Dave has chosen to play his sad song Abilene about the girl who gets into abusive relationships. I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t play it again tonight. Although not from a recent album, he plays this song almost every night so I’m sure it has special significance to him. For me it used to be the sad song that I would want to hurry up and be over, but now I am appreciating it more by paying more attention to the interplay of the musicians during the performance.
This was the inspired night – a packed crowd at the club, a fun Saturday night with the band well-rested after not having traveled that day. Dave’s solos seemed a little bit hotter, like on Out of Control (but that might have been just one fan’s imagination). Chris Miller seared the juices once again on Dry River.
Dave had to call his co-writer of “9-Volt Heart,” Rod Hodges of The Iguanas, out onto stage with him to sing because he was forgetting the words to that song. Gee, my hero Dave Alvin is only human and screws up his own songs once in a while.
So far I haven’t seen Dave do any acoustic guitar work on this tour. The times I know about last year’s tour, it was typical for him to play about 30 minutes on the Stratocaster, half an hour on the Martin acoustic and then back to the Strat for the rest of the show. Back in ’98 shortly after “Blackjack David” came out when he was stressing that “there are two kinds of folk music – loud and soft,” he would start most shows with 30-35 minutes on the acoustic, then strap on the Strat and kick ass with it for the rest of the show. Songs such as Blackjack David and Mary Brown have evolved from being acoustic on the record to being able to be played very interestingly live on stage with the electric solid-body guitar by Dave, but I still like to hear an acoustic segment to some shows. And there’s people who prefer to have just the electric rock aspects of Dave with The Guilty Men.
PolkSalad reported a scary scene where he was standing. There was a birthday party of people having fun and Polk said it had been a long time since he had seen that many “ugly, drunk white people with no rhythm!” By me, the ugly drunk white people were not trying to dance quite as much.
The total playing time was about an hour and 45 minutes. Tickets were $20 and The Iguanas opened. Two of the Iguanas horn players came out for Dave’s encore. I got to meet Heileman, Dixie and Mrs. Dixie from Cussin’ Board fame, so that was cool.
Albuquerque [Chris Gaffney]
Red Rose
Sinful Daughter
Abilene
Out of Control (with My Favorite Things)
9-Volt Heart
Out In California
Dry River
Somewhere in Time -> Ashgrove
4th of July
American Music
encore:
Sugar Bee -> band intro instrumental -> Marie, Marie -> So Long Baby, Goodbye
More photos by PolkSalad:
Chris and Rod during the encore:
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| February 14th, 2005 09:56 PM |
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| PolkSalad |
"Volver, Volver!!!" |
| February 14th, 2005 11:20 PM |
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| mac_daddy |
well done, barney! |
| February 15th, 2005 02:37 PM |
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| Barney Fife |
quote:
mac_daddy wrote:
well done, barney!
Thanks, Mac Daddy-O! There's more:
Dave Alvin and The Guilty Men, Feb. 13, 2005, Underground City Tavern, Springfield, IL
Be careful what you wish for. I got mine – an acoustic performance by Dave and the Guilty Men night before last with a more varied song list than usual.
The Underground City Tavern is in the basement of the Hilton, which appears to be Springfield’s largest hotel. I had been to see Tom Russell in that hotel before, but in a different venue. The room is a weird semi-L shape with the stage back in a V-shaped corner. The stage is puny - only about 18 feet wide in front and four and a half feet wide in back of drummer Bobby Lloyd hicks so the six band members were much more crowded than they’re used to. .
I lucked out because the band started playing about half an hour later than the 8:00 show time that the tickets stated and I was running a bit late from spending the afternoon with friends in a southwest Chicago suburb. There were none of the usual intro songs by Chris Gaffney, and Dave announced that because the small room was not conducive to his electric guitar, he was going to play an all-acoustic set. Surprise, surprise (wink), he played Abilene again, and an acoustic medley of Somewhere in Time and Ashgrove was about as good as an electric one. But it was really great to stray from the tour's more common set list.
Some of my favorites were: Border Radio with a slight interlude of Sam and Dave’s "Cupid," Mary Brown into Out in California, and Blue Wing in the encore. During Dry River, Dave broke a guitar string, so while he was replacing that, Chris Miller on steel guitar and Joe Terry on piano had a friendly battle of musical chops. That song has become a real showcase for Chris Miller's steel guitar ass-whoppin' skills. At the end, Dave turned to Chris and jokingly said, "show off!"
Afterwards I went and bought beer and beef jerky at a gas station on the way to my motel, satisfied that I had gotten the full gamut of Dave’s performances this weekend.
King of California
Barn Burning
Rio Grande
Border Radio (with "Cupid")
Mary Brown -> Out in California
Abilene
Walk Right In
Somewhere in Time -> Ashgrove
4th of July
Dry River
Marie, Marie
encore:
Blue Wing
Long White Cadillac
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| February 21st, 2005 10:34 PM |
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| mac_daddy |
dig it...
Dave Alvin & The Guilty Men
Continental Club, Austin, TX
2005-02-18
This was recorded for a British video crew, and we got a smoking recording that they will use as part of their film project.
Source Info:
Track 1 & 2: Earthworks SR-77
Track 3 : Earthworks QTC-1
Track 4 & 5 : Soundboard
To Deva IV
Mixed in Digital Performer 4.5 to 2 channel audio.
I'm going to leave this as a DVD Data disc with the 24-bit Wav File in it. This way you folks can do what you want with it.
and...
THE BLASTERS
"Echo"
Echo Park, CA
02/05/05
Source: SP-CMC-8 cardioids > SP-SPSB-6 > D100
DISC 1
01 (house music)
02 Long White Cadillac
03 4-11-44
04 Rebound
05 Try to Keep it Clean
06 Dark Night
07 (give me a big 'f' chord"
08 Cryin' for My Baby
09 So Long Baby Goodbye
10 The Boneyard
11 Dry River
12 I'm Shakin'
13 Border Radio
14 It's All Your Fault
15 ?
DISC 2
01 Slip of the Tongue
02 Red Rose
03 Daddy Rollin' Stone
04 ?
05 Marie Marie
06 One Bad Stud
07 (crowd)
08 Love is My Business
09 American Music |
| February 22nd, 2005 02:09 PM |
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| polksalad69 |
quote:
mac_daddy wrote:
dig it...
Dave Alvin & The Guilty Men
Continental Club, Austin, TX
2005-02-18
This was recorded for a British video crew, and we got a smoking recording that they will use as part of their film project.
Source Info:
Track 1 & 2: Earthworks SR-77
Track 3 : Earthworks QTC-1
Track 4 & 5 : Soundboard
To Deva IV
Mixed in Digital Performer 4.5 to 2 channel audio.
I'm going to leave this as a DVD Data disc with the 24-bit Wav File in it. This way you folks can do what you want with it.
and...
where? am I missing the link to it? |
| February 22nd, 2005 02:40 PM |
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| mac_daddy |
quote:
polksalad69 wrote:
where? am I missing the link to it?
that's a private one - shoot me an email (or PM). |
| February 24th, 2005 01:40 AM |
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| Barney Fife |
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, Dave on CDR!
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