Live eTown Radio Taping with Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Brennan Leigh

Date and Time

• Wednesday, Jan 22, 2025  7pm - 9:30pm

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About Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore:

The 11 songs on TexiCali also connect the duo's shared fondness for a broad range of American music forms. On their own, both have been prominent artists for decades. A philosophical songwriter with a captivating, almost mystical voice, Gilmore co-founded influential Lubbock group the Flatlanders in the early 1970s. Alvin first drew attention as a firebrand guitarist and budding young songwriter with Los Angeles roots-rockers the Blasters in the early 1980s.

Gilmore is primarily known for left-of-center country music, while Alvin’s compass points largely toward old-school blues. But there’s a lot of ground to cover beyond those foundations, and both artists also are well-known for transcending genre limitations. So it’s not surprising that they’ve spiked TexiCali with cosmic folk narratives, deep R&B grooves and even swinging reggae rhythms. “There’s such a strange variety through the whole thing,” Gilmore says. “And I love that.”

They’re both quick to credit the musicians who joined them in the studio as crucial to the sound and spirit of the album. On Downey To Lubbock, they recorded primarily in Los Angeles with a crew that included ringers such as the late Don Heffington on drums and Van Dyke Parks on accordion. This time, though, Alvin’s longtime rhythm section of drummer Lisa Pankratz and bassist Brad Fordham played a larger role, along with guitarist Chris Miller and keyboardist Bukka Allen.
“After the time we spent touring, Jimmie and I became members of this band,” Alvin says. “The band can play just about anything, which the album shows off.” They recorded much of TexiCali in several 2023 sessions at The Zone recording studio just outside of Austin, which is home for Pankratz and Fordham as well as Gilmore. “That’s why it was worth the drives down I-10 to Austin and back to California,” Alvin continues, “to get everybody together and capture what a good band it is.”

Gilmore concurs. “The band genuinely created a lot of what this record is,” he says. “It wasn't pieced together by studio musicians; it was a whole thing made by a real band.”

TexiCali also found Alvin and Gilmore increasingly focusing on original material. That wasn’t necessarily a goal or gameplan, they both say — but when it came time to select songs for the sessions, more than half of those that made the cut were tunes they wrote or co-wrote.

Among them are “Trying To Be Free,” which Gilmore wrote more than 50 years ago, and “Death of the Last Stripper,” which Alvin wrote with Terry Allen and his wife Jo Harvey Allen. There’s also a fresh take on “Borderland,” a song from Gilmore’s 1996 album Braver Newer World, and Alvin’s bluesy “Blind Owl,” a tribute to Canned Heat co-founder Alan Wilson.

Just as important, however, are the choices they made for non-original material. Any projects that involve Gilmore invariably will lead to a song by his longtime friend and Flatlanders bandmater Butch Hancock. Thus we get the hypnotic “Roll Around,” set apart by the reggae-tinged playing of Pankratz, Fordham and Miller.
Elsewhere, Alvin pushed Gilmore to explore the full range of his voice. “I think Jimmie is one of the great contemporary blues singers,” Alvin says, explaining why they recorded the Blind Willie McTell staple “Broke Down Engine.” And their take on Stonewall Jackson’s “That’s Why I’m Walking” marries Gilmore’s country croon to a New Orleans R&B arrangement. Gilmore says, “I love New Orleans music, “but it’s not the music I play.” Dave slyly counters: “It is now!”

But it’s Brownie McGhee’s “Betty And Dupree” that strikes closest to the heart of this musical partnership. Their first album together also included a McGhee song, “Walk On.” Long before they knew each other, a teenage Alvin and a twentysomething Gilmore got to hear folk-blues legend McGhee (with his longtime partner Sonny Terry) at L.A. blues club the Ash Grove, during Gilmore’s brief time in California in the late ’60s. Gilmore actually befriended McGhee during a short stay in the Bay Area, where Tennessee native McGhee resided in his later years.

Alvin recalls how they discovered these connections when they first toured together as an acoustic duo in 2017. “Jimmie would pull out something and I'd be like, ‘Wow, you know that song?’ And if I was feeling comfortable, I’d chime in singing. So (the McGhee covers) are a way of harkening back to those early few months of touring together.”

“Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee were part of the group of people that Dave and I had both been deeply influenced,” Jimmie agrees. “It’s a real good example of the glue that keeps Dave and me together.” So will there be another Alvin/ Gilmore record? And if so, will they turn to McGhee’s songbook once again? Alvin doesn’t hesitate: “Yeah!”

About Brennen Leigh:

Brennen Leigh is an American songwriter, guitar player, mandolin player and singer whose to-the-point storytelling style has elevated her to cult icon status in Europe, Scandinavia, across the United States, South America and the United Kingdom. Her songs have been recorded by Lee Ann Womack, Rodney Crowell, Sunny Sweeney, Charley Crockett, and many others. As renowned for her musicianship as for her writing, it’s easy to see how Leigh caught the ear of greats like Guy Clark, who colorfully endorsed her flatpicking. And David Olney, who described her writing as “tender, violent, sentimental, foolish and wise, she is always Brennen. Confident and at ease with herself, without being a jerk about it.”