Dave Alvin - New Highway

 

My amazing wife is always way more in touch with new releases than I am and she picked up this latest book from Blasters (and infinite other bands) guitarist Dave Alvin. Appropriately subtitled "selected lyrics, poems, prose, essays, eulogies and blues", Dave spells out just what you'll find in this tome.

A fine writer, his stories are, as he says at one point, "autobiographical" although "not necessarily true"! I dig what he's saying here, as memories fade, and some things just sound better once they are embellished. His lyrics occasionally don't stand on their own on a written page, but most of them are pretty damn great and tell micro-stories in the best sense - and that's damn hard to do well. 

He makes me jealous by telling tales of seeing blues and R'n'B giants at small clubs in the LA area as I realize that, while he grew up in LA and therefore had a head start on me, there were many that I could have still caught but missed as I wasn't aware of them. And he even had a chance to freakin' see Jimi Hendrix! But, I am grateful for seeing the likes of the Blasters and innumerable punk'n'new wave' n'garage bands in tiny clubs with a handful of others once I did get to Hollywood.

Reading this does make me miss LA and makes me nostalgic for the crazy times that I had there - both good'n'bad. I wish that I had been a better songwriter and had been able to capture the times and the lifestyles nearly as well as Dave did. There was a lot of heartbreak, plenty of wild times, plenty of hard times (financially and emotionally) and lots of, yes, sex, drugs, alcohol, and rock'n'roll, and ending with true, eternal love - the best gift that LA gave me.

Interestingly, he mentions John Stewart, who I happened across in the 70's and always dug, but I didn't know that he wrote "Daydream Believer" or that he was in the Kingston Trio! 

And did I ever mention that we discovered that Dave was our house-behind-us neighbor in Silverlake, but we didn't find out until we were moving out and he commented on a Tiki head we were transferring? (He has a funny story of a couple of young women walking by him working in that yard and asking if he was Kid Rock's dad!)

Talented dude, lots of great writing of all types, amazing tales of meeting and watching incredible legends and lots more. This is about as highly recommended as can be!