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From: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/columns/music_reporter_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002234809
March 23, 2006
Alvin heading 'West' into California dream
By Chris Morris
An album of cover versions can sometimes be a window into a musician's roots. So it is with Dave Alvin's "West of the West," due May 30 from Yep Roc Records.
The set, produced by guitarist Greg Leisz, gathers a baker's dozen tunes by California songwriters, ranging from the well-known (Merle Haggard, John Fogerty, Jackson Browne, Brian Wilson, Tom Waits and Los Lobos' David Hidalgo and Louie Perez) to the relatively obscure (Jim Ringer, Blackie Farrell). Like Alvin's 2000 release "Public Domain," an album of covers that won a Grammy for best traditional folk album, it affords an enlightening sense of the performer's artistic sensibilities and his status as a native of the Golden State.
Alvin, who was born and raised in Downey, has toyed with the project since 1994, when he contributed to "Tulare Dust," Hightone Records' Haggard tribute. "There was this talk of doing all California songs," Alvin recalls. "I said, ehhh, maybe that's a little too 'Bing sings Hawaiian.' "
While several of the songs on "West of the West" are specifically set in California, Alvin -- who has written and recorded prolifically as a solo artist since his days with the Blasters and X in the '70s and '80s -- ultimately settled on the idea of mining the repertoires of other California writers. The result is an album reflective of the state's broad cultural and musical palette.
"The nature of the state is diversity, and the nature of how people live in California," Alvin says. "Merle Haggard and Jackson Browne may have met, but they view the universe differently. They're all in their niche."
He adds, "It's a kooky state."
Alvin sifted dozens of songs, and some suggestions about material were offered by such performers as Waits, Browne (a former school classmate of producer Leisz) and Tom Russell (who co-wrote the album track "Between the Cracks" with Alvin). The work of certain idiosyncratic musicians like Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa proved to be resolutely resistant to interpretation.
"Beefheart songs, they're impossible," Alvin says. "We came close to doing (Zappa's) 'Trouble Comin' Every Day.' It was a hard choice."
"West of the West" is finally an exquisitely measured depiction of the light and dark sides of the California dream. Like Alvin's own material, such songs as Farrell's "Sonora's Death Row," the Alvin/Russell collaboration "Between the Cracks" and Fogerty's Creedence Clearwater Revival track "Don't Look Now" consider life with gritty realism. But the set reaches a blissful conclusion with a version of the Beach Boys' "Surfer Girl."
Alvin considers the latter track to be his best recorded vocal. He says that he received an important assist in the studio from the lead vocalist of the Los Angeles doo-wop group that backs him on the song. "Fred Willis, the leader of the Calvanes, was there in the control room, basically telling me what notes to sing," he says. "It was a vocal and an education at the same time."
Before Alvin begins a June tour to support "West of the West" with his band the Guilty Men, he'll briefly step into a sideman role.
Next month, the "all-star" lineup of the pioneering L.A. punk group the Flesh Eaters -- which included vocalist Chris Desjardins, X's John Doe and D.J. Bonebrake, the Blasters' Alvin and Bill Bateman and Los Lobos' Steve Berlin -- will regroup for three California dates (including one April 6 at the Echo in L.A.) before playing London's All Tomorrow's Parties festival.
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