Dave Alvin
A GRAMMY-winning singer-songwriter and self-described “barroom guitarist,” Dave Alvin is widely considered to be one of the pivotal founders of the current Americana music scene. Since forming the highly influential rock/R&B band the Blasters with his brother Phil in 1979, and throughout his long and critically acclaimed solo career, the California-born Dave Alvin has mixed his varied musical and literary influences into his own unique, updated version of traditional American music. Combining elements of blues, folk, R&B, rockabilly, and garage rock and roll with inspirational lyrics from local writers and poets such as Raymond Chandler, Gerald Locklin, and Charles Bukowski, Alvin says that his songs are “just like California. A big, messy melting pot.”
Alvin’s thirty years of recordings and live performances move through the loud, aggressive rock and roll of the Blasters to the contemplative acoustic storytelling of his solo albums, and from the traditional folk of his GRAMMY-winning album Public Domain to the electric blues of his Ashgrove release. Alvin has always managed to unite seemingly disparate genres into a cohesive vision of contemporary roots music.
Dave Alvin’s songs have been recorded by many contemporary roots artists, such as Los Lobos, Little Milton, Robert Earl Keen, Marshal Crenshaw, Joe Ely, Dwight Yoakam, James McMurtry, Buckwheat Zydeco, and Alejandro Escovedo. His songs have also been featured in many television shows and films, including Justified, The Sopranos, True Blood, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Cry-Baby, Miss Congeniality, and From Dusk till Dawn.
Jimmie Dale Gilmore
Jimmie Dale Gilmore is a native of the Texas Panhandle, having been born in Amarillo and raised in Lubbock. His earliest musical influence was Hank Williams and the honky-tonk brand of country music that his own father played. In the 1950s, he was exposed to the emerging rock and roll of other Texans, such as Roy Orbison and Lubbock native Buddy Holly, as well as Johnny Cash. He was profoundly influenced in the 1960s by the likes of the Beatles and Bob Dylan and the folk music and blues revival of that decade.
With Joe Ely and Butch Hancock, Gilmore founded the Flatlanders, a band that has been performing on and off since 1972. Gilmore received wide critical acclaim for his debut album, After Awhile, including as Country Artist of the Year for two years running from the Rolling Stone Critics’ Poll. He had a small but memorable role in the 1998 movie The Big Lebowski as a bowler named Smokey, an aging, emotionally “fragile” pacifist threatened with a pistol by the main character’s right-wing sidekick (John Goodman). He has also been a guest on the television shows The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with David Letterman, as well as on the radio programs A Prairie Home Companion and Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
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