In the mid to late 70´s I was a confused rock and roll teenager in Mechanicsburg,Pa..(home of "Poison" and the subject of several Warren Zevon songs)... All I knew (much to my parents dismay) was I wanted to be a Drummer in a Rock and Roll Band...I went through a bunch of phases, Prog, Art Rock, Classic Rock..My tastes ranged from Joni Mitchell to Led Zeppelin (who adored each other by the way)...Janis Joplin, Pere Ubu, Television, King Crimson, Boston, New York Dolls, Dead Boys, Deep Purple, Kate Bush etc. Never in my Life did I subscribe to a specific genre...

Lydia Lunch once said "The genius of Nick Cave is he convinced an entire generation of Goth and Emo kids to listen to their parents music" My old man was completely sold out for Classic Country... With only one stereo system in our home it was a constant battle...with him often exclaiming "This here record player don´t play rock and roll"... Still, with my staunch eclectic nature, I couldn´t help but grow fond of his Bobbie Gentry and Johnny Cash albums...He´s gone now, But some of my fondest memories were of him cruising around on his big black Honda Goldwing...With an 8-Track player built into the faring...blasting Johnny Paycheck´s "Take this Job and Shove It"....

Refusing to be pigeon-holed I didn't have a lot of friends, But one day one of my best buds Will Moritz and I took off (risking our young lives) through 8 feet of pensyl-tucky snow to gorge ourselves on 10 cent McDonalds cheeseburgers...We had been bitten by the Rock-a-Billy bug recently and and a song came on the FM radio that was so undeniably rockin it had us jumping up and down in our seats...That song was "Marie Marie" by "The Blasters"...and so began our obsession...Man these cat´s were kickin it..and we could relate to the song like nothing else we had heard in some time... We wanted out of those lonely cornfields and were both lusting for bright lights and better things... Will took off for Los Angeles to work for Panavision and I took off for New York to be a Cowboy Junkie Rock and Roller, enjoying a modicum of success in the No Wave/ Noise/ Art Rock medium... But (as usual) I digress...We immediately ran out and bought the Blasters album ...and life long super fans we became...Dave is one of the most down to earth, non pretentious artists I have ever had the good fortune of meeting... A true Gentleman, in every sense of the word..So here I am today...Thanking my lucky Stars I get to share a bit of dialogue and help spread the legacy of Virtuoso Guitarist and Composer Mr. Dave Alvin himself...

I guess the most exciting thing for your many fans of late is you and your brother Phil reuniting and going back in the studio for the first time in decades, to track a collection of Big Bill Broonzy classics entitled "Common Ground" (see above for a taste)...How did this joyous event come to pass?

My brother, Phil, went through a couple of close calls health wise in the past couple years so I decided it was time to finally make a full studio record together. We sang a duet on a song I wrote for us on my last album, Eleven Eleven, three years back and then sang together on the Stephen King murder musical, The Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, but we hadn’t done a complete studio album in 30 damn years. I thought we’d go back to square one and do an album of one of our earliest musical inspirations, the immensely talented bluesman Big Bill Broonzy.

Being in a band, even without the actual family element involved, I've always thought is kind of like a marriage.. Was this difficult for you? Was there a sibling rivalry? Why did you ultimately end up leaving the band?

The Blasters were 5 guys who all grew up together loving old blues, rockabilly, etc. So we were/are all brothers and we all played together and fought like brothers. It wasn’t just Phil and I who were fighting. We all did. That emotional intensity between all five of us is why I think we were such a tight and, well, intense live band. I left for too many reasons to go into but that intensity that I just mentioned, got to be to too much to take on a daily basis.

Throughout your illustrious Solo career, you've had the opportunity to share stages with so many historically brilliant artists...It must be an amazing revelation when your heroes become your peers... Was there a high point for you?

I’ve had a lot of high points. In The Blasters we played with heroes of ours like Big Joe Turner, Willie Dixon and Carl Perkins. Those are certainly highpoints to me. Some high points are completely unexpected. In my solo career I guess recording with Tom Waits on his version of Sea of Love was one. Winning a Grammy for my album Public Domain was a big damn unexpected highpoint. Jamming and touring with Bob Dylan a couple of times. Writing and producing songs for John Water’s movie Crybaby. Recording an album with the late master songwriter, Bill Morrissey. Producing albums for Sonny Burgess, Big Sandy, The Derailers, Tom Russell, Red Meat and so many more, those were all high points. The kind of stuff you never believe would happen and you kind of don’t believe it ever happen though it did. Just being able to survive playing music for a living is maybe the biggest damn highpoint.

The only time I was fortunate enough to meet you in person...was at the Johnny Paycheck memorial concert shortly after his passing. I've always thought many of his contributions were so overlooked. Sure, "Take this job" was a brilliant piece of art and kind of an anthem for the working poor... But there was so much more to this immortal gentleman... Do you have any thoughts, memories or anecdotes about this ground breaking artist?

Johnny Paycheck was a great singer and a bit of a larger than life character. He was certainly more of an influence on 60s/70s country music than he gets credit for.

One of your Masterpieces "Long White Cadillac" was a Major Hit for another of my Hero´s Dwight Yokum. (although I sometimes think he should be sending royalty checks to the Buck Owens Estate). Much like yourself, I always thought he was a different breed of country artist, intelligent, well read, sober. Did you have much interaction with him? I've heard it whispered in the rumor mill that he´s not exactly the nicest guy on the planet... I´m hoping you can dispel this?

Dwight and I were pals long before he got discovered and became a star. I knew him when he was playing half empty country joints in the San Fernando Valley with his amazing band doing basically the same show that he did after he hit it big. We hung out a lot in those days and had some wild and stupid fun. Yeah, he’s a smart, perceptive and soulful guy. We didn’t always agree on things but he could always discuss his views intelligently and honestly. When we recorded Long White Cadillac, I was struggling financially and he really helped bail me out of a tough damn time. I’ll forever be thankful for that. We live in different worlds now but I’ll always consider him a friend

I guess the main thing that´s always fascinated me about you is that you are a total renaissance man, Crossing Musical Boundaries...Being a Published poet, giving the genre police a big F.U.! I mean what other artist in history has been so eclectic and open hearted to have grown up influenced by the likes of T-Bone Walker, Big Joe Turner, Lee Allen, the Bakersfield (Nashville West) Scene... But went on to perform with "X", The Gun Club, The Knitters, Flesh Eaters and most recently young Pop sensation Bruno Mars at the Super Bowl... I know Steve Earle got a lot of flack for crossing over...Have you ever experienced any for your unique and magical musical Diversity?

I probably would have an easier time career-wise if I picked one genre and stayed with it but I would have been bored. I’m basically a blues guy. That’s my natural way of approaching and playing music. I just like to play and have fun and learn from a lot of different musicians. I don’t care whether they’re folk, blues, rockabilly, punk, country, jazz, acoustic, electric, whatever. To me a good song is a good song no matter the genre. As a songwriter I want to be able to write whatever I want to and not be constricted by the genre police. Yeah, I know it confuses some people but artists like Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan and Doug Sahm didn’t care about genres and those cats are heroes of mine for that reason.

Being born and raised in Downey, California...(The home of the first McDonalds) and much more notably...The Carpenter Family...I can´t help but ask.. Did you know them? Or know of them when you were growing up? Karen was such a tragic loss... So beyond talented, successful.. but portrayed as never truly happy or fulfilled... If at all possible, could you share some insight into your neighbors early years?

I never knew The Carpenters and I hated them growing up in Downey. There had been a lot of tough, local surf music out of Downey in the early sixties, bands like The Rumblers and those guys were my local heroes. As I got older though, I grew to appreciate Karen’s huge talent and tragedy. I wrote a song called Downey Girl (on my Guilty Women album) about growing older and starting to understand her talent and all the pain she went through and how I now view her with a lot of empathy and pride. Still love The Rumblers though.

The song "American Music" instilled in myself and many others a sense of great pride and musical patriotism concerning our artistic heritage...I´m still proud to be an American Artist...But due to the never ending wars, and our seemingly rapidly disintegrating personal freedoms..as well as a very divided demographic . I've taken refuge in southern Brazil, a nation of peace and prosperity...(gotta tell ya...the term "Southern Rock" is pretty amusing to the artists here) I long for the days of rotary phones, 57 Chevy´s, and when kids went outside to actually interact with their friends, catching fireflies, building tree forts etc. Instead of living inside these Orwellian little boxes (i-pads, violent video games etc.)..Where do you think we are headed as a nation? Some are saying we are on the verge of another cold war? Will we recover the dream that (imho) America once was? A place where anyone was welcome to come and be free to pursue a better life?

Nothing wrong with taking pride in being American. Hell, any country that can give the world Mark Twain, Robert Johnson, Woody Guthrie, Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, Hank Williams, Billie Holiday, George Gershwin, Howling Wolf, Ernest Hemingway, Memphis Minnie, Chuck Berry, Malcolm X, Merle Haggard, Dashiell Hammett, Dorothy Parker, Son House, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Elvis Presley and Jimi Hendrix, to name a few, is pretty damn culturally stunning and deeply complicated. It’s a big old mixed up, messy, wild, beautiful damn place with a bloody, inspirational and frustrating history. Our art and music come from all those conflicting things. I think that’s why our various art forms have so much depth, passion and universal appeal whether it’s bluegrass or thrash metal. Being proud of being American has nothing to do with right wing or left wing politics really. It’s about pursuing an ideal of freedom. A possibly unreachable ideal but no other country was based on that ideal of freedom for all. I have no idea what awaits the future of America, though. I’m just a barroom guitar basher. It’ll be interesting though.

I guess I might as well approach another taboo subject here...You are such a tenacious, motivated, unstoppable force in the art world... Even as we approach mid-life... You continue to keep on keepin' on... Creating and inspiring... Where does your strength come from? Do you have a guiding light, a concept of God so to speak? What keeps you waking up in the morning? Breathing in and out?

All I’ll say on that is I’m very fortunate to do what I love and somehow survive doing it the way I want to do it. Music is my religion. It might be a cliché to say that but it’s true to me.

I gotta tell you brother, this little bit of correspondence with you has been the high point of my venture into music journalism... From the bottom of my heart, I am so sincerely grateful to you for your time and inspiration ...Wishing you and Phil great success with the new album and tour!... Health, Happiness, Harmony...Peace, Love, Rock and Roll!!!

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