Dave Alvin: Blaster, Guilty Man, & King of California
- Josh Kitchen
- Oct 3
- 11 min read
By: Josh Kitchen / October 3, 2025
Perhaps no lyric better captures Dave Alvin’s personal and musical ethos than the line from his classic track, "Ashgrove:" “We all need something just to get us through. Well, I’m going to play the blues tonight.”
You might not expect one of the world’s finest blues guitarists and lyricists to come from Downey, California—but Dave Alvin was made different. Influenced by blues greats like Big Bill Broonzy and Lightning Hopkins, along with his brother Phil, he co-founded The Blasters in the 1979 and burst onto the LA punk scene with a brand of alt-country-infused rock that fans affectionately began calling “cowpunk.” The band called it "American Music."
Since then, Alvin has of course carved out a singular career, releasing layered and infectious albums filled with the stories of the American Southwest—lonely towns and dive bars, Abilenes, Maries, and black roses of Texas. Dubbed the “King of California” after his beloved 1994 album of the same name, he’s continued to shape American roots music with countless projects: penning “4th of July” with X, leading his rotating bands the Guilty Men and later the Guilty Women, forming a deep partnership with Lubbock legend Jimmie Dale Gilmore. He and Gilmore are fresh off a run opening for Charley Crockett and Leon Bridges, and most recently Alvin has been diving into psychedelic blues with The Third Mind, a band including Alvin, members of Camper Van Beethoven, and vocalist Jesse Sykes. The Third Mind dropped their latest record, Right Now! just last week.
It’s been a wild road for Alvin, and not without hardship—he recently battled stage IV colorectal cancer, a fight he now stands on the other side of in remission. Tonight, he brings his journey full circle with a Third Mind show at the Troubadour, which he’s promised will be nothing short of a light-drenched extravaganza. I caught up with him ahead of the gig to talk about The Third Mind, his cancer recovery, growing up in Downey, the early Blasters days, and everything in between.
Dave, The Third Mind's new album - Right Now! just dropped. You've been putting out a few albums now, including a live one this year. This is your second one of the year, and this is more studio tracks, and I'm in love with it. "Reno Nevada," what a song.
Richard Fariña, yeah. It’s a lot of fun for me, you know, to do The Third Mind. It’s allowing myself to play in a way that, depending on your perspective, is either self-indulgent or expansive or… I don’t know.
It feels like jam bands are having a moment in pop culture. Phish are even playing the Sphere in Las Vegas.
Phish have always been popular.
That's true, but people still gravitate towards newer and younger bands too, who are doing the jam band thing.
Yeah. You know, some of it, I think, has to do with… (this is some crazed logic on my part…) a lot of it has to do with the fact that cannabis is legal.
Back in the ’80s we used to make jokes about the differences between ’60s music and ’80s music, and ’70s music, and ’50s music. In the ’50s, a lot of people were into alcohol, and downers and uppers. If you were drinking cheap white wine and taking downers, it was oldies-but-goodies. If you were taking uppers, it was Chuck Berry and Little Richard.
In the ’60s, everybody was smoking weed and taking LSD. The music was expansive. In the ’70s, LSD wasn’t what it was anymore, so it was a lot of weed, singer-songwriters, and then near the end of the ’70s cocaine became everywhere. Into the ’80s, music became all about eighth notes.
Now weed is legal—you can’t buy a menthol cigarette in California, but you can buy weed—that’s going to change the way people listen to music, what kind of music they listen to, and how they experience it.
But I don’t really put The Third Mind fully into the jam band thing, even though it kind of is. One of the reasons why is our singer, Jesse Sykes. She’s incredible. I’ve heard every kind of great singer in my life—from Big Joe Turner to Big Mama Thornton, to opera singers like Jessye Norman and Beverly Sills. I’ve seen them all. I’ve been in bands with great singers: my brother Phil, John Doe. Jesse’s voice is so unique. What she brings to the songs makes us different from your average jam band.
When I hear her sing, I feel like her voice is full of history. It's lived in, authentic, - you believe that voice.
Yeah. One of the rules of The Third Mind is: don’t play too loud when Jesse’s singing. Her voice is tough, but it’s frail. She’s not a rock shouter. So the volume comes way down when she sings.
The way she interprets songs is similar to when I sing ballads. You put so much emphasis on each word. She really does. She’ll take a word like “the” or “that” and give it meaning. She sculpts vocally, sculpts these words.
Because she’s the vocalist, it’s not like your average jam band. And because I’m a songwriter—that’s mainly what I’m good at—even though Jesse and I have written a couple songs together, like the beautiful one on the new album, in general we’re doing older folk and folk-rock songs in a different way. It’s not like a tribute. She’s not trying to sing like Janis Joplin or Grace Slick. She’s just got her own voice, and then once she’s done singing, we can take it wherever we want.
Congratulations on coming so far since your cancer diagnosis a few years ago. Seeing you come back from this makes me think of that great song you have with Jimmie Dale Gilmore, "We're Still Here."
That’s one of the reasons we wrote it. You know, cancer is so… I don’t want to get too heavy here, but I’m a big fan of traditional medicines, especially since all my treatments. But medical treatment can break your spirit. That’s where music was a big help for me. There were weird times. I couldn’t play guitar for seven months because after chemo my hands swelled up—they were like Mickey Mouse hands.
Neuropathy?
Yeah, and I still have it in my feet. My hands are normal now, but my feet… I can walk, but from my ankles down I’m either in pain or I don’t feel a thing. The thing about cancer is, we live in a carcinogenic culture. Not just the U.S.—the entire world. Everything is carcinogenic. Whether it’s the cigarette in my hand or the glass of milk you hold—there are chemicals in everything.
I think your music has always been about healing. A song like, "Ashgrove." You wrote that over 20 years ago, and the lyrics are still so important. You sing about things that were happening then that are still happening now. “Because we all need something just to get us through. Well, I’m going to play the blues tonight.” To me, "Ashgrove" is a love song. It feels like your ethos, your love of the blues, and of how music heals.
Yeah. If played correctly—hell, even if played incorrectly—music has that power if you let it.
It feels like people are listening to the blues again. One of the biggest films of the year (Sinners) -is literally about the blues.
Yeah. It comes and goes. American roots music, when you think about the blues or country music, has always had cycles. The blues has been abused a lot. And I’ve abused it. As a fan I’m a purist. As a performer, I’m not. If I’m going to listen to blues, I go to Lightnin’ Hopkins, Charley Patton, Leroy Carr, Son House, Big Bill Broonzy, Big Joe Turner, Memphis Minnie. Even with The Third Mind—if you listen closely, I’m just playing the blues. Everybody else is doing their thing, but I’m doing Johnny “Guitar” Watson and Magic Sam. Maybe Magic Sam on LSD, but still Magic Sam.
Whatever kind of music I’m playing, I’m the blues player in the band. But as a songwriter I never want to be limited. With The Blasters, we all grew up playing blues and R&B. My job as songwriter was: how do I write blues songs for a blues band that don’t sound like typical blues songs? The way I did that was incorporating as many traditional American elements as I could.
A lot of blues-rock people start their definition of blues at the Fillmore West in 1969—Jeff Beck, the Allman Brothers. That’s where it starts for them. We intentionally stayed away from that because it was already overdone. We worked more from Frankie Lee Sims, Lazy Lester, jump blues, Big Joe Turner.
Music has power. It can make you immortal when you’re playing it. Sometimes when you’re listening you get a few seconds of immortality. Or a few minutes of peace. Or a few seconds of joy.
One of my favorite bands is Los Lobos. I've always loved the connection between you and them. Talk about your early support of those guys.
How much detail do you want? My brother and I saw them in the late ’70s when they were an all-acoustic band playing traditional Mexican music—weddings, quinceañeras. There was even a little local PBS documentary. They were just this neighborhood band playing acoustic instruments, and we thought, “Those guys are cool.” Years later, around ’81 or ’82, The Blasters were headlining the Whisky. Lobos came backstage with a homemade 45—“Farmer John” b/w “Anselma”—and a cassette of garage recordings. They were now an electric rock and roll band trying to meld worlds. We realized they were the same guys we’d seen before. Like us, they couldn’t get gigs on the west side of LA. The Blasters had finally transitioned to headlining those clubs, and I thought, “Let’s help these guys out.” We got them across the Harbor Freeway, as we used to say. That helped them.
The LA scene then—yes, there was backstabbing, but overall bands helped each other. The Go-Go’s helped us early on, X too. That’s one of the things about LA then. It wasn’t until I became a solo act that I realized the rest of the world wasn’t like that. In the late ’70s and into ’81, the LA scene was so great because everybody sounded different. Catholic Discipline didn’t sound like Circle Jerks. The Dickies didn’t sound like The Screamers. The Weirdos didn’t sound like X. Everybody had their own sound. Then it became that everything had to sound like Black Flag. Black Flag were great—don’t get me wrong—but it became mandatory. That’s when I lost interest.
It’s going okay. Liberation Hall, the company we leased the masters to after we got them back from Warner Bros., are doing a fine job. It’s great to have that stuff out again. We were an important band for a while. We had influence then.
Some people get mad at me because I don’t play like The Blasters anymore. But my brother has health issues, Gene Taylor passed, Lee Allen passed. If Johnny, Bill, and I did something now, it wouldn’t sound like The Blasters. It would sound like Johnny, Bill, and me. We did some reunion gigs in the 2000s for Rhino’s reissues. The amazing thing was, when the five of us got together, we sounded exactly like The Blasters—only better. But if you take any one of us out, it changes.
One of my favorite songs of yours is "Everett Ruess." How did you find that story?
It kind of fell into my lap at a junk store. There was this book from 1932 or ’33, autographed by his mother. A book of his woodcuts and drawings. I bought it for five bucks. Read it. And I thought: who is this guy?
Everett Ruess had very understanding bohemian parents in the late ’20s who let him go off every summer into the High Sierra with his mule. After high school he connected with people like young Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange. He started taking three-month trips to the Four Corners, before there were roads. He’d disappear and come back. He kept telling people someday he’d go in and not come back. That’s what happened. It struck a nerve in me. That’s the kind of poetry I like in a song—the mystery of it all.
There are so many American stories like that—mysteries of the natural world, and a lot that are waiting to be told.
Yeah. It gave me a chance to weave in my own feelings. I don’t like to write songs that hit you over the head. With Ruess, I could weave in things from his poems that I felt too.
Tell me something people might not know about Downey, California.
How much like Fort Worth, Texas, it is. Or even better—how much like Lubbock.
That makes sense for why and Jimmie Dale [Gilmore] get along.
Yeah. First time The Blasters went to Lubbock, in ’82 for the Buddy Holly Festival, I thought: this is exactly like Downey. Old part of town, ’50s tract homes. Downey when I grew up was in transition. Still rural parts—orange groves, bean fields, avocado groves, olive groves. The San Gabriel riverbed and Rio Hondo riverbed were my Mississippi. Not as grand as Huck Finn’s, but mine.
It was also a place where, because of location, my brother and I could discover older musics. We’d find old 78s and realize the performers were still alive and living nearby. People like Big Joe Turner or Lee Allen—we could see them, be mentored by them. Southeast LA then was a good place if you were interested in older music. You could find Western swing, blues, R&B, Norteño—whatever.
It sure seems like there couldn’t have been The Blasters, or you, without Downey.
Funny thing about Downey: I was the youngest. The other Blasters were older. There were tons of great musicians around: Mike Roach, still one of the greatest guitarists I’ve ever heard. Everything’s measured on the Mike Roach scale.
Gary Massey could only play like three guitarists—T-Bone Walker, Jimmy Reed, Kenny Burrell. But he could do them perfectly. Couldn’t play Clapton, but those three he had nailed.
There were adventurous musicians. We’d get rides to The Ash Grove, 25 miles away. My brother had an incredible teenage blues band with Gene Taylor, Johnny Bazz, Gary Massey. They played local bars, then further out, like Rick’s Blues Bar in Venice on Abbot Kinney—hard to imagine now, but back then it was gritty.
My favorite song of yours is, "Abilene." Is Abilene okay? How’s she doing?
I haven’t talked to her in years, but she’s fine. That song is autobiographical. Not necessarily true, but autobiographical. That one is true. I’ve always thought about writing part two. She did all right. I miss playing it. We don’t do it with Jimmie Dale because it has too many chords. Some songs of mine, I don’t understand why they haven’t been covered. To me, “Abilene” is beautiful. Billy Strings started playing “King of California,” and that was a huge honor. An A&R guy once told me I wrote weird songs. “Does everyone have to die in them?” Well, not all. Some people survive. But it is a little weird that “Marie Marie” was a huge international hit for Shakin’ Stevens but never in the U.S. Buckwheat Zydeco did a great version too. Part of it is that I never played the songwriter game. I’m a fourth- or fifth-generation Californian. I don’t want to live anywhere else. I tried Nashville in ’89. Liked some of it. But to succeed you have to live there, shake hands, network. I’m not a “Hi, how you doing” guy. Not unless I’m lubricated. And I don’t drink anymore.
So much of songwriting is a game. Same with movie music. I did a lot of it for a while because directors like David Lynch were fans. I thought, “Maybe I’ll quit the road and do movies.” But you have to give everything else up to do that. And I’m not interested. Playing live makes me the happiest.
Listen to Right Now! below and catch The Third Mind at the Troubadour - tonight!
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