Interstate City
Dave Alvin is one of the half-dozen best rock & roll songwriters of the past 15 years, but it wasn't until 1991 that he learned how to sing. Before that, he made one disappointing solo album and otherwise left the singing chores to his big brother Phil in the Blasters or John Doe in X. Since he finally matured as a vocalist--learning to sing within his Dylanesque limitations rather than trying to sound like the Big Joe Turner he'll never be--Alvin has gone back to those earlier songs and redone them, as if to demonstrate how he heard them in his own head when he first wrote them. He redid seven songs on the 1994 studio, acoustic project "King of California," and he gives five more new life on "Interstate City," recorded live with a rocking band at Austin's Continental Club. The Blasters' "Look Out (It Must Be Love)" gets additional lyrics, a new swing arrangement and Katy Moffatt harmonies; the band's tribute to Franklin Roosevelt, "Jubilee Train," is jammed together with Woody Guthrie's "Do Re Mi" and Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" into a long, raucous medley. The new songs include "Out in California," a blues-shuffle cowritten with Tom Russell; the title track, afilm noirrecitation over moody, slow blues; and "Mister Lee," an exuberant New Orleans tribute to Alvin's mentor, Little Richard's saxophonist Lee Allen. This doesn't quite match Alvin's seismic, undocumented 1991-92 tour with the Skeletons, but it's the next best thing.--Geoffrey Himes