Dave Alvin & The Guilty Ones

Event information

Dave Alvin has not toured the UK since 1995, so we are very excited to have booked him to play Oxford on this occasion.

Dave and Phil Alvin founded The Blasters in their hometown of Downey, California in the late 1970s. Beginning in 1980 with the Blasters' debut album, Dave's songwriting pioneered the marriage of punk attitude with blues, California country and rockabilly. The brothers called it "American music"; it would eventually be labelled by others as ‘roots rock’. The Blasters released four studio albums between 1980 and 1985 and Dave's songs "Marie, Marie," "Border Radio" and, of course, "American Music" became staples of the burgeoning genre.

Dave's solo career began with 1987's "Romeo's Escape" and in 2000 he won the traditional folk Grammy for his collection of songs from the early part of the 20th century, Public Domain: Songs From the Wild Land. Soon thereafter he began recording for Yep Roc, which released his last three albums, West of the West, Ashgrove and Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women.

His latest album is ‘Eleven Eleven’. "The songs on Eleven Eleven, Dave says, "are all about life, love, death, loss, money, justice, labor, faith, doubt, family and friendship. The usual stuff."
"Mortality has been an issue on my mind ever since Ashgrove. Since finishing that album, I lost some great friends Chris Gaffney, Amy Farris and Buddy Blue of the Beat Farmers. That weighed on me."

The rules Dave Alvin has followed throughout his 24 years as a solo artist were discarded during the creation of this album. For the first time in his career he wrote songs while touring and recorded during breaks on his tours in 2010 with the Guilty Women. He used musicians he had not recorded with since his days in the Blasters, and for the first time ever, he sang on a record with his brother Phil, the lead singer of the Blasters. "While we were growing up there was a firm line between Phil and me," Dave says, referring to Blasters' division of labour: Phil sang, Dave wrote the songs and played lead guitar. "The main reason I decided to have him sing with me was that we re not going to be here forever; we might as well have fun. Life is too short."

Eleven Eleven features three duets: Phil and Dave on the simmering blues "What's Up With Your Brother"; Dave and Christy McWilson from the Guilty Women on the gentle country number "Manzanita" and the whimsical song, "Two Lucky Bums," the final recording of Dave and his best friend, the late Chris Gaffney. The rest of the material, rich in stories that stretch from R&B royalty to labour history to Harlan County in Kentucky, was written over the course of seven months. As he says with sly chuckle: "The songs are not necessarily true, but they re all autobiographical."

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