Dave Alvin

Brian Wilson; Dave Alvin; Living Sisters; Harper Simon (Walt Disney Concert Hall; 2,265 seats; $35-$49.75) By PHIL GALLO

2009-12-08T14:56:00.000-08:00

Studying California almost always requires the examination of contrasts. The songwriting careers of Brian Wilson and Dave Alvin, two youths raised in the L.A. working class suburbs of Hawthorne and Downey, respectively, begin about 15 years apart, their perspectives defined by the specifics of time and place. Wilson, in the Beach Boys, captured innocence, youth and sunshine in the early '60s; Alvin, in the late '70s and '80s in the Blasters and as a solo artist, reflected on loss, specifically the promises and culture of the Golden Gate state. Played side-by-side Sunday at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Southern California sounded like two very different places.
After a week of California classical perspectives in the West Coast, Left Coast series, Disney Concert Hall played host to the pop flip side in "Songs of the Sun" with Alvin taking the theme to heart and personalizing his statement. Wilson, backed by most of his band on acoustic instruments, gave a shortened version of his standard show.

Wilson's 11-song set was filled with glorious, raise-the-roof harmonies, a celebration of girls, cars, teen angst, surfing, an a cappella cover of the Four Freshmen's "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring" and, for one pensive five-minute stretch, the Wilson-Van Dyke Parks masterpiece "Heroes and Villains."

Alvin's eight-song set, which included an impromptu "Surfer Girl," was more stark and reflective, the sounds of sighs and pain rising from Greg Leisz' slide work on an assortment of stringed instruments. In Alvin's world, the waterway is a dry river, the radio plays oldies for separated friends and lovers, and the great hangout is but a memory, having burned down years ago. And in "Downey Girl," his recent tribute to his hometown's first celebrity, Karen Carpenter, Alvin uses biography to pose personal questions about pride and character, the sort of soul-searching Wilson and Tony Asher achieved on "God Only Knows" that Wilson sang with his usual crack-in-the-mettle persona.

Memory, more than the here and now that made Wilson a champion teen chronicler, supplies the depth in Alvin's folk and blues-based tunes.

Where Wilson succeeded by taking the Hollywood dream and applying it to the local landscape and rock 'n' roll, Alvin stays inland and assumes the roots of the Southern refugees who made their way west a generation before his birth. One side of the California dream Wilson and Alvin describe is freedom in all its manifestations. On the other side, it's a steady paycheck.

The Living Sisters -- native Angelenos Inara George and Eleni Mandell with Lavender Diamond's Becky Stark -- play light folk with angelic three-part vocals, a reminder of the debut album of the Roches from 30 years ago. "You Make Me Blue," a song by George, daughter of the late Little Feat leader Lowell, shared the alchemy used by Wilson and Alvin, mixing doo-wop with folk music for glorious effect.

Opener Harper Simon shares considerable musical DNA with his father Paul, a resolutely non-California sound. His winsome personality, combined with deft finger-picking guitar style, strong wordplay and engaging melodies, made for an impressive four-song set. The reason for his inclusion on the bill, though, is a mystery.

Live: Brian Wilson and company in the 'Sun' Dave Alvin, Harper Simon and the Living Sisters help the Beach Boys legend make 'Songs of the Sun' concert

2009-12-08T14:46:00.000-08:00

Talk about California dreaming. . . .

At the end of Sunday's "Songs of the Sun" concert, part of the L.A. Philharmonic's West Coast, Left Coast festival celebrating regional culture, headliner Brian Wilson invited the rest of the night's performers back to the stage for a multi-generational singalong on a couple of his signature hits, "Surfin' U.S.A." and "Fun, Fun, Fun."

Out trotted singer-songwriter Harper Simon, who had opened the evening, the ad hoc female harmony trio the Living Sisters -- Inara George, the daughter of Little Feat founder Lowell George; jazz-pop singer-songwriter Eleni Mandell; and Lavender Diamond's Becky Stark -- and veteran Southland roots-rock singer, songwriter and guitarist Dave Alvin.

One bit of wishful thinking for aficionados of Southern California pop music went unrealized: that of a more substantive musical meeting between Wilson, the melodic and harmonic genius behind the Beach Boys, and Alvin, the heart and soul of the Blasters, one of the great L.A. bands of the '80s.

Yes, Alvin added his voice (off-mike) and hand claps to the two iconic Beach Boys hits of the '60s, songs born of this region's surf and car cultures. But it could have been an even more symbolically ideal collaboration had he strapped on a Fender electric guitar -- the locally produced embodiment of the sound and spirit not only of the Beach Boys but also of rock 'n' roll itself -- to handle parts originally played by Wilson's late brother Carl.

That nit officially picked, "Songs of the Sun" nevertheless was an illuminating night of appropriately casual and largely acoustic music-making rooted in the exquisite vocal harmonizing that is central to Wilson's music and that of the Andrews Sisters-cum-Roches-inspired Living Sisters. Those harmonies also can be found in the folk-country narrative storytelling tradition that Alvin has embraced over the last 30 years.

Simon started off with four songs delivered much as he would have done them in his appearances at the Silverlake Lounge, which he referenced early on. "Berkeley Girl" most directly connected with the night's geographical focal point, with its nods to those nexuses of indie-rock, Silver Lake and Echo Park.

Alvin came next with a 45-minute set that he opened with a short homage to another under-sung Southland singer-songwriter, John Stewart, whom he saluted with a verse from the title track from Stewart's paean to the Golden State, "California Bloodlines." That segued into Alvin's "California's Burning," a more caustic look at what's happened to the state once regarded by much of the nation as the Promised Land.

His sweet ode to Karen Carpenter, "Downey Girl," was complemented by steel guitar ace Greg Leisz, playing dobro. "Dry River," his unromanticized account of growing up near the concrete banks of the San Gabriel River, led nicely into "King of California."

He topped off his set with "Ashgrove," his celebration of the long-defunct folk-blues club, and a rare latter-day reading of "Fourth of July," reconfigured into a slower, more haunting folk-style rendition than the version he recorded after he'd left the Blasters and joined X.

George, Mandell and Stark, dressed in complementary silver, gold and blue lamé mini-dresses, warbled sweetly during their 15 minutes on stage, mostly as an interlude between the centerpiece sets by Alvin and Wilson.

Wilson stuck largely to cornerstone Beach Boys material but did it in a relatively unfamiliar way. He placed more emphasis than usual on the vocals because of reduced instrumentation, just two acoustic guitars, bass, piano and occasional keyboards, rather than his full-scale 10-piece band.

There was an exquisite a cappella nod to one of his primary influences, the Four Freshmen, and a timely version of "Little Saint Nick." That led to an audience singalong on "Help Me, Rhonda" and "Good Vibrations."

It was the perfect climax to a near-perfect evening.

randy.lewis@latimes.com

Music Menagerie Presents - Rantoul & Die a romantic comedy - June 20, 2009

2009-06-12T15:58:00.000-07:00

click on image to make bigger

Rantoul & Die Benefit Performance Website

'Man of Somebody's Dreams: A Tribute to Chris Gaffney'

2009-03-27T11:45:00.000-07:00

'Keep Your Soul: A Tribute to Doug Sahm' and 'Man of Somebody's Dreams: A Tribute to Chris Gaffney'
By Randy Lewis
March 25, 2009
Various Artists

"Keep Your Soul: A Tribute to Doug Sahm"

Vanguard

* * *

Various Artists

"Man of Somebody's Dreams: A Tribute to Chris Gaffney"

Yep Roc

* * * 1/2

Tribute albums can be flimsy excuses to string together recordings by a hodgepodge of musicians. But in the right hands, they can be genuinely illuminating efforts, especially in the case of honorees who deserve broader recognition. Fortunately, two new collections paying posthumous props to Tex-Mex singer, songwriter and bandleader Doug Sahm and his spiritual brother, Southern California roots musician Chris Gaffney, fall squarely into the second camp.

The connection between the albums runs deeper than shared appearances by Los Lobos, Dave Alvin and Alejandro Escovedo, or even the presence of Sahm on the Gaffney album by way of his Texas Tornados' recording of Gaffney's haunting "The Gardens."

They are musical soul mates, genre-defying singers and writers who were equally at home with a Tex-Mex polka, a honky-tonk two-step, a soul ballad or a rock 'n' roll barn-burner. And both dusky-voiced singers were intimately attuned to the geography from which that music sprang. Sahm died almost a decade ago at 58, of natural causes; Gaffney passed last year at 57 from liver cancer.

Sahm's brief brush with mainstream success came in the 1960s, when his Sir Douglas Quintet logged Top 40 hits with "She's About a Mover," "The Rains Came" and "Mendocino." He could be reasonably credited as the father of the Americana/roots music movement, weaving together threads of rock, R&B, blues, country and Mexican music into a vibrant and organic tapestry in his subsequent solo recordings and with his Grammy-winning Tornados.

Bob Dylan is among Sahm's legion of music cognoscenti fans, although he's not on "Keep Your Soul: A Tribute to Doug Sahm." The 14 tracks are dominated by fellow Texans, including Jimmie Vaughan, Charlie Sexton, Delbert McClinton, Joe "King" Carrasco and Terry Allen. Likewise, the Gaffney album skews toward his compadres from the Southland roots-music community, including John Doe, Tom Russell, Peter Case, Robert "Big Sandy" Williams and Gaffney's Hacienda Brothers partner, Dave Gonzalez.

In their version of "Nuevo Laredo," the Gourds find the magic Tex-Mex groove that Sahm pretty much defined more than four decades ago. McClinton handles "Texas Me," documenting Sahm's move from the Lone Star State to San Francisco when that early success started to turn his world upside down.

Gaffney never had that problem, slugging out a living for the last three decades mostly in Southland bars. His empathy for the solitary habitués of those watering holes showed up regularly in his incisive songs such as "Six Nights a Week," which Peter Case powers through here.

Alvin assembled this tribute for Gaffney, who was a member of his Guilty Men band and his best friend, and he adds an enlightening first-person introduction to "Artesia." The song is one of Gaffney's many testaments to the unique facets of Southern California that have given way to tract homes and shopping-mall culture.

David Hidalgo handles the lead vocal on the title tune, which might be Gaffney's most moving composition, a country waltz about a man who is "living a vision of his own indecision, he's all alone with his pride." Joe Ely cranks up the wattage with a rollicking performance of "Lift Your Leg," a masterpiece of bar-bred bravado, and Calexico turns what Gaffney performed as an ebullient norteño polka, "Frank's Tavern," into a moving ballad.

Both albums end on poignant notes: the Sahm tribute closes with his son, Shawn, doing a rendition of "Mendocino," while the Gaffney album leaves the final word to Gaffney himself in a recording made shortly before he died.

Alvin recorded him singing Stanley Wykoff and Michael Berberet's "Guitars of My Dead Friends," and you can hear the toll his illness had taken on his once mighty voice. But it's a fitting homage to the legacy that music can leave behind.

randy.lewis@latimes.com

Eddie Vedder Joins John Doe & Exene Cervenka's Knitters to Party fo Obama in Seattle

2009-01-22T17:15:00.000-08:00

1/21/09, 1:19 pm EST
The country’s best inauguration party Tuesday night turned out to be in the other Washington: At Seattle’s tiny Tractor Tavern club, the Knitters (the rootsy side band led by X’s John Doe and Exene Cervenka) played a Americana-soaked barnstormer of a show — complete with a guest appearance by Eddie Vedder. “Whenever anyone’s being a cynic and an asshole, saying it’s just gonna be the same old thing, do me a favor and tell ‘em to fuck off,” Doe told the crowd, in one of the evening’s many happy references to the day’s events. Then he invited Vedder onstage to duet with Cervenka on a gleefully frenzied version of X’s 1983 tune “The New World,” with its sardonic lyrics about another election: “It was better before they voted for what’s his name.”

Vedder, who had managed to blend in to the crowd (which also included his Pearl Jam bandmates Jeff Ament and Mike McCready) with his hair tucked into a big black knit cap, was in a mood to celebrate: He pounded out the beat on Doe’s back with his fists, slow-danced with Cervenka, and played air guitar while the Knitters’ Dave Alvin (formerly of the Blasters) finished the song with a lengthy solo that incorporated both Chuck Berry licks and what sounded like part of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” “Thank you, man in the black hat,” Doe said.

HOLIDAY FUNDRAISING AT COPRO NASON ART GALLERY DEC 13, 2008!

2008-11-29T14:52:00.001-08:00

COME GATHER WITH YOUR FRIENDS
FROM THE DOG & PONY SHOW
FOR A HOLIDAY FUNDRAISING EVENT AT
COPRO NASON ART GALLERY DEC 13, 2008!

It’s that time of year again, when we look forward to communing with our friends and loved ones and sharing the years events. And this years past events sure have given us a lot to talk about.

First of all, in the past year + we lost some of our favorite people to illness. Chris Gaffney, Steve Bartell, Jeff Cranford - you will all be dearly missed. We’ve also seen other good friends go through tough medical times. Drac Conley is seeing the better side of his surgery for prostate cancer, with 5 post surgery screenings coming up negative (that’s good). Candye Kane holds good thoughts and continues with clean tests as well after fighting off a rare form of pancreatic cancer. Duane Jarvis has just gone through another surgery, but is back in LA ready to continue the battle. Please keep sending your good thoughts as he is prepares for chemo in the coming months. All are still trying to recover financially from past and present medical bills and lost wages.

With all of your help our fundraising event over Labor Day weekend to help with these medical needs was a huge success. We raised just over $30,000.00 in ticket sales, art sales and the raffle! Unfortunately, there is a dark side to this story in that Sam has not paid us all of the money that was raised from the advance ticket sales at Safari Sam’s. He still owes us $5,680. and has been slow to respond on this. Sam – PAY UP!

Anyway, back to a brighter note on the year’s events….
WE ELECTED A NEW PRESIDENT! With the Bush years nearly behind us, we can go with hope into 2009, and know that with our help, we could see a brighter future for our children. With our help and persistence, we will hopefully see some sort of new structure to our healthcare system so that in the future our friends won’t need to think about the financial ramification of getting sick. I know - I’m idealistic. But I’ll hold onto this thought as we stand behind our new President in pushing for change.

In the meantime! Let’s have a PARTY!

Copro Nason Art Gallery at Bergamont Station in Santa Monica has offered to continue the fundraising efforts of the Dog & Pony Show by hosting our annual holiday party this year! They have invited many great artists to show in the gallery and will donate proceeds of sales to The Dog & Pony efforts! This is such a huge help for us, as with the financial setbacks of the year, our party would not have been able to happen without their help.

So come join us for food, drink, great music by Joe Wood http://www.myspace.com/joewoodandthelonelyones, Champagne Velvet http://www.myspace.com/champagnevelvet and other surprise guests. Let’s end this year with some fun and look forward to a brighter New Year!

Where: Copro/Nason Gallery
Bergamot Station Art Complex,
2525 Michigan Ave. Unit T5
Santa Monica, CA 90404

When: Saturday, December 13, 8:00-12mid

A portion of the proceeds from this show will be donated to
“The Dog and Pony Show” http://www.musicmenagerie.net/dogandponyshow/. The music and art community is filled with talented people who share the plight of having no access to adequate healthcare. There is a national problem with our healthcare system and we all need to help each other in these dark times. All of the money donated will go directly to pay the bills of those who need assistance. We will also have a silent auction on some original work prints to directly benefit
"The Dog and Pony Show". The more money we raise the more people we can help.

ARTIST LIST:
Alex Garcia, Bad Otis Link, Bethany Marchman, Brandi Milne, Brian Viveros Brooke Kent, Charles Manson, Chet Zar, Chris Peters, Christopher Pugliese, Dan May, Dan Quintana, Delphia, Eric Fortune, Femke Hiemstra Jasmine Worth, Jeff Gillette, Jimmy Pickering, Keith Weesner, Kevin Scalzo KMNDZ, Kukula, Lauren Gardiner, Lola, Luke Chueh, Makiko Sugawa, Mari Inukai, Mark Covell, Martin Wittfooth, Michael Page, Naoto Hattori, Nathan Spoor, Peter Forystek, Tin, Ver Mar, Vince Cacciotti, XNO & more

myspace.com/musicmenageriedogandponyshow
Dog & Pony Show website

DOG & PONY SHOW - Aug 30, 31 & Sept 1

2008-08-06T22:14:00.001-07:00

Dear friends & fans:

I’d like to let you know about a 3 day benefit called the Dog & Pony Show that some close friends and I have put together for this coming Labor Day weekend, Aug 30, 31 and Sept 1.

The past year has been very hard health wise for many members of the California music scene. Four friends/musicians of ours (western soul singer Chris Gaffney, superb guitarist Duane Jarvis, blues diva Candye Kane, psycho-billy hot-rodder Drac Conley) were all diagnosed with different forms of cancer and need our help to deal with the expense of their various treatments. Instead of putting on four different benefits, I thought it might make more sense to do one BIG one featuring many of the bands and musicians that have played with Chris, Duane, Candye and Drac through the years. Thus, the Dog And Pony Show was born.

Seeing how my late friend (and spiritual advisor), Chris Gaffney, always referred our gigs together as “dog and pony shows,” I thought that his descriptive phrase would be a perfect name for the benefit (though he never did tell me which one of us was the dog and which one was the pony).

Sadly, as many of you may know, Chris passed away recently but the good news is that Duane, Candye and Drac are doing fine and hanging tough through this rough time. Without going into a long dissertation on the state of health care in our country, I would like to point out that they still need financial help with their treatments and recoveries. All the money we raise at the Dog And Pony Show will be going directly to them (or in Chris’s case, to his survivors) to cover their medical expenses.

If you are in California this Labor Day weekend, or even remotely nearby, I’d like to personally invite you to come to the shows. There will be great music, drinks, dancing, barbeque, some memories, some laughs, a couple of tears and a roomful of love. I’ll see you there.

myspace.com/musicmenageriedogandponyshow
Dog & Pony Show website

Dave Alvin – Aug 6, 2008

Los Angeles City Beat - On the Road To Indio 4/23/08

2008-04-23T14:14:00.000-07:00

Dave Alvin on rough-tuff creampuff Chris Gaffney

Last Thursday, Chris Gaffney – a sweet bruiser who led the Cold Hard Facts, partnered with Dave Gonzalez in the Hacienda Brothers, played accordion for the Guilty Men, and was married to his wife Julie for almost 25 years – died of liver cancer in Orange County. Gaffney was a man of smoky voice and wit, and he wrote two of our all-time favorite lyrics: “You’re looking for a man who wouldn’t love you if his life depended on it,” and “I met your brother yesterday, he’s a loser / He’s living in Fontana with a kitchen for his farm.” A benefit that was organized before he passed will still take place Sunday at Anaheim’s storied Doll Hut with the Ziggens, Big Sandy, Kid Ramos and others, and a proper memorial will be held Wednesday at the Cellar in Long Beach.

His best friend, Dave Alvin, talked to CityBeat.

–Rebecca Schoenkopf

CityBeat: When did you and Gaffney first meet?

Dave Alvin: ’Bout ’87 maybe, ’88 somewhere, at Raji’s, this club on Hollywood Boulevard – a dump where like Guns ’N Roses came out of. I was dating the bartender. I was down there, heard this band. After two songs, I started shouting requests, and we got this whole banter going between the heckler and the band. Then he says, “We’re gonna do a song about Hawaiian Gardens” – when have you ever heard somebody say “We’re gonna do a song about Hawaiian Gardens”? – and being a Downey slob, it was like, “Hey, cool!” He was one of those people that you’ve known all your life, you just haven’t met ’em yet. We were instant friends, and then within a couple of years we were best friends, till … well, whatever.

Was he with you in Ireland?

Oh, you mean the Van Morrison thing?

Yeah, when Van Morrison kicked Glen Campbell out of his dressing room … . The way Gaffney put it was, “He kicked Glen Campbell out of Glen Campbell’s dressing room, so he’d have more room not to be in.”

No, I wasn’t there. That was with the Hacienda Brothers. He told me the story though … a couple of times, as he was wont to do. He was always very sensitive about slights. So even though he and Glen Campbell weren’t exactly golfing buddies, well, he didn’t like people throwing their weight around. One reason I loved him so much was he had this great sense of right and wrong. Sometimes he was wrong, and you’d convince him of it, but he always had people’s backs. But look at this way: It was Van Fucking Morrison in Fucking Ireland – so yeah, you give up your room. Now, if it was in Branson … .

So … tell me something else.

How do I cover 20-something years? “He wore socks, frequently!” “He was partial to food.” What do you wanna know? When did we realize we were gay for each other and should get married? I will tell you one of his least proud moments. He had the Cold Hard Facts, and they were playing some hotel in Long Beach – the Breakers maybe? – a big outdoor gig. And the next band hadn’t showed or couldn’t make it, so they offered Chris like another hundred bucks or something to stick around and play another set and judge the hot buns contest. “Sure, no problem,” Chris says, but it’s the best male buns contest. And Danny Ott says, “Another feather in our hats.”

Danny Ott is a very fine guitarist.

He’s a great, great, great guitar player. He was at the Gaffney house yesterday. We were putting together our benefit for late August. You know, Gaffney, it’s not like he’s Mariah Carey, but he does have thousands of fans all over the world. I truly believe that 10, 15 years from now, it’ll be like, “You saw Gaffney at the Upbeat?” You go to Europe now, it’s like that already. But it’ll be like, “You touched Gaffney?” “You got drunk with Gaffney?” There’s gonna be an awful lot of people who never met him, saying they played with him, they were his friend.

I was his friend.

I know you were.

Whenever I’d walk in during their set, they’d launch into “Fade to Grey,” even if they’d already played it, because he knew it was my favorite.

He was a giver. When we were touring, I used to give all the guys their per diems in a lump sum at the beginning of the week, but he’d come to me like two days later: “I need another hundred bucks.” “Well, what happened to what I gave you?” “I gave it to a guy. He was in pretty bad shape.” I learned to give him like 25 bucks a day instead. The lesson is: He was bad with money. I know I’m rambling. That okay?

You know, after the chemo started, he didn’t want anyone around, except for Julie and his sister Helen. So Helen’s sitting with him in his living room, and he’s sitting there in his man-chair, and he accidentally answers his phone. Someone’s on the line going, “Anything I can do for you, Chris, anything you need, please just let me know,” and he goes, “Yeah. I want a couple of tickets to The Pirates of Penzance.” You know, he was a Golden Gloves champ, just like fucking Sinatra! “Oh, nobody wants to know about that,” he’d say. He was irreplaceable! Where do you find a guy like that, who then has a voice that gives Lou Rawls a run for his money?

Apparently, Costa Mesa.

Yeah, or Hawaiian Gardens. He was my best friend, he was a rough-tuff creampuff. I’ve known great singers, everyone from Big Joe Turner to my brother to Little Milton to Bob Dylan – “I’ve known ’em all!” – but Chris was one of the purest musicians I’ve ever met. It came natural to him. I used to think he didn’t know how good he was, but he knew way how good he was. The last few years, touring with me and then when Gonzalez put together the Haciendas, were the happiest of his life. He’d spent so many years being abused playing in shitholes in Garden Grove. You know, so many of my friends … Buddy Blue, Country Dick … I never got over Buddy’s passing, I don’t know how I’m gonna recover from Chris’s.

And Dick Cheney’s still alive. Explain that one to me, smartypants.

Published: 04/23/2008

Up From the Ashes: The Ash Grove Is Reborn on a UCLA Stage

2008-04-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

A celebration marking a half century since the opening of the seminal Los Angeles folk/blues/world club the Ash Grove brought something home: The roots of American roots music is in rootlessness.

All night long, in the first of two evening concerts marking this milestone, artists who in more recent years shaped modern American roots music -- Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal, Dave Alvin -- reminisced warmly on the stage at UCLA's Royce Hall about teenage journeys to the Melrose Ave. music spot to worship and learn at the feet of the masters: bluesmen including Lightnin' Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and Rev. Gary Davis, such mountain music mainstays as the Stanley Brothers, plains balladeers such as Ramblin' Jack Elliott, even Eastern European folk music revived under the direction of musicologist Mike Janusz.

"The Ash Grove," noted Alvin this night in a scorching electric blues song he wrote in tribute to the old club he and his brother Phil made regular pilgrimages to from nearby Downey, "that's where I come from."

If not for Ash Grove founder Ed Pearl, Alvin stressed, most of those blues greats would never have even come out to play in California. Folkie Arlo Guthrie, who as an unannounced guest opened the evening with a fine rendition of his dad Woody's anthem 'This Land Is Your Land,' said that his first West Coast trip was a 1965 gig at the club, when he was just a teen himself. Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger and fellow Rolling Stones mate Bill Wyman were among those who would stop by when they were in town, not as performers but as fans.

The music the youngsters heard in the late '50s and through the '60s, though, was the music of the displaced, the refugees, the kidnapped, those forced to leave their homes: Africans stolen into slavery, Jews fleeing poverty and pogroms, Irish escaping famine and oppression, English and Scottish crushed under the Industrial Revolution. The people playing the original Ash Grove were direct descendants of these immigrants, just a generation or two removed, if not immigrants themselves, caught between two worlds, not exactly as welcomed here as some myths would have it, but with no "home" to which they could even think of returning.

But for the wide-eyed kids, coming of age in a postwar, consumer-driven suburbia, arguably the most stable and comfortable situation in the history of the non-upper-classes, the yearning of the rootless somehow resonated. And it wove a thematic thread through this show, with Ramblin' Jack doing Woody Guthrie's satirical Dust Bowl migrant ballad 'Do Re Me' and Cooder singing Agnes Cunningham's comparable 'How Can You Keep On Moving (Unless You Migrate Too),' a song he learned at the Ash Grove.

Sure, it's pretty much a social anthropological cliche by now: the combo of Eisenhower-years blandness, the true establishment of a middle class and the mass-media explosion that opens up windows to other cultures and ideas sparks a new consciousness, music helps fuel awareness of civil-rights issues, a generation comes of age questioning the values of the power structure and, well, the '60s happened. Don't sell it short. The Ash Grove alone was perceived as enough of a threat to someone that it suffered three arson fires, the last closing it for good in 1973.

In the highlights of this concert, though, the tone turned personal more than political. Alvin's short set held a particularly deep note for the death a few days before of long-time musical saddle pal Chris Gaffney, with a line tossed into 'Ash Grove' and a dedication of a moving 'Shenandoah' to "my best friend." But then he couldn't wipe a big grin off his face as he and band accompanied elder statesman Ramblin' Jack through his digression-filled tales of the drifting life. Cooder, teaming with veterans Mike Seeger and Roland White for a tribute to "old timey" music, remembered nights during high school accosting Elliot and Carter Stanley as they came off stage to show him licks they'd played, and also imitating Pearl decrying any sense of commercialism even in performers mentioning albums they were promoting. Emcee Dr. Demento told of when he was simply young Barry Hansen working as a ticket taker, stage manager and everything else at the club. Unannounced surprised guest Ben Harper brought a real sense of currency and continuity by being joined by his mother, Southern California folk maven Ellen Chase, for an entrancing unplugged set with his band, including a sweet mother-son duet on Dylan's 'Tomorrow Is a Long Time.' (Word is Ben and Mom are going to make an album together, which, based on this little taste, will be a treasure.)

The inspiration took many forms: Holly Near, another graduate of the Ash Grove school, showed in her segment with East Coast duo Emma's Revolution how she channeled the lessons learned into a career of women's rights, civil rights and environmental activism. Culture Clash offered up political theater in the Ash Grove spirit with an excerpt from their 'Chavez Ravine,' another work about cultural and physical displacement in its pointed satire of the destruction of a multicultural community for the building of Dodger Stadium around the time the Ash Grove was founded. And younger musical artists Laura Love and Ashley Maher brought the Ash Grove aesthetic into newer contexts with, respectively, a distinctive brand of funk folk rooted in old spirituals and civil-rights anthems and a hybrid world music/dance bridging modern America and traditional Africa. And closing this first night, a motley Eastern European jam session blasted spiritedly into the wee hours.

The musical pinnacle came in the Cooder/Seeger/White set on a number in which Seeger played harmonica and fiddle simultaneously (a neat trick) on a mournful, haunting lick, singing lyrics about slaves being transported, with Cooder coming in for an electric slide solo that echoed Blind Willie Johnson's ghostly, despairing 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.' This performance at once captured that intersection of generations at the founding of the Ash Grove, that passing of rootless displacement into the realm of folklore roots, though the song itself shows that's nothing new. It was 'Stolen Souls From Africa,' a piece associated with white abolitionists more than a century before the Ash Grove even existed.

Pearl himself, in a brief address to the crowd, made a call for a new Ash Grove, something he said is needed in a time of complacency he likened to that of when he started the original club. The case can be made. Punk is by and large toothless, rap is becoming a caricature. There would seem not just a need but untapped demand for something really of substance, a unifying, galvanizing musical force that would bring in stray youth in search of, well, something. But is that even possible in the blogosphere era, when every music, every opinion, every thought is instantly accessible? No kid has to go to a club to learn about folk music or blues or anything today. Never mind creating something so threatening to the power structure that someone would burn it down once, let alone three times.

Live: Ash Grove's 50th Anniversary

2008-04-21T17:22:00.000-07:00

The long-lost club is remembered with an all-star show.

By Steve Appleford, Special to The Times
April 21, 2008

The seats at Royce Hall were still empty when Ramblin' Jack Elliott stepped onstage for his Friday afternoon sound-check and rehearsal, a black cowboy hat pulled low over his tangle of white, bushy hair. He sat on a stool and strummed his acoustic guitar, singing of coming west from the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, a musical cautionary tale written by his friend and mentor, the late Woody Guthrie.

"California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see," Elliott sang in a voice rich and fittingly rough. "But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot, if you ain't got the do re mi."

He was joined by Dave Alvin and his band, all "Ash Grove babies," musicians just old enough to have been teenage regulars at the old club on Melrose. "I can still smell it," Alvin said. "Old wood and cinnamon, with tobacco smoke." That 150-seat venue finally burned down in 1974, but only after a dozen years as a crucial West Coast room for folk, blues, bluegrass and other organic sounds of Americana.

Elliott and Alvin were among a powerful lineup at a weekend-long musical celebration of the club's 50th anniversary, hosted by UCLA Live. On Friday, they shared the stage with Ry Cooder, Ben Harper and Holly Near, along with vivid eruptions of West African and Mediterranean folk music. (Saturday's show would include Taj Mahal, Michelle Shocked and Watts Prophets.)

At 76, Elliott was ready for another gig among old friends. And watching from behind a video camera was his daughter, Aiyana, leading a documentary crew for a film on the Ash Grove's legacy.

Out back having a smoke was Arlo Guthrie, the night's surprise guest, set to open the show with his father's "This Land Is Your Land." His hair and mustache were long and silver now, and he remembered that he got his first West Coast gig at the Ash Grove when he was just 18.

"After 43 years of playing, there's a lot of clubs and venues under the bridge, but I remember that one," said Guthrie, who credited club owner Ed Pearl for emphasizing social consciousness over business.

As the night's concert began, Alvin plugged in for the rumbling, bluesy "Ashgrove," a song from 2004 that's less a tribute to the club than a lament on years lost and a changed world, sung in Alvin's fluid baritone: "All the old bluesmen have all passed on, and I'm out on this highway travelin' town to town . . . I'm just tryin' to raise the ghosts up out of their graves."

Back in the 1960s, Cooder was a teen prodigy studying the blues and folk masters up-close at the club. And on Friday, he sat in for a short set of old-timey tunes with the folk and bluegrass masters Mike Seeger and Roland White. They picked through "She's More to Be Pitied" (as recorded by the Stanley Brothers) with warmth and precision, but when Cooder slipped into a bit of modern technique, he shook his head and said, "I ought to be thrown out for doing that!"

During an intermission, Pearl watched musicians roll in and out backstage. "We're an hour behind," Pearl said, but he didn't look unhappy. "It's a wonderful show." He was soon at the microphone himself, praising the music while comparing today's grim political climate with that of the Ash Grove's founding in 1958: "Art is always the escape valve."

That political mission was fully represented by a moving and hilarious appearance by Culture Clash, as the comedy/theater troupe performed parts of its tragicomedy "Chavez Ravine." Near spoke of ending the war in Iraq, and Laura Love sang the civil-rights anthem "We Shall Not Be Moved" to cheers as she added the lyric, "Like that man in the White House, they must be removed . . . ."

It was midnight when Taj Mahal introduced Harper, who brought a band that included his mother, singer Ellen Chase, once an Ash Grove regular. Together they performed Harper originals, from the dramatic folk of "Gather 'Round the Stone" to the Dixieland of "Suzie Blue," plus a new duet, "Spanish Red Wine."

Before stepping onstage, Harper said he considered it "a very prestigious honor" to be considered part of the Ash Grove lineage. The music there represented "some of the best manipulations of silence that human beings have to offer. It's some of the best music that has come out of this country."

Chris Gaffney - Los Angeles Times Obituary

2008-04-18T17:22:00.000-07:00

Chris Gaffney, 57; witty songwriter, Southern California bar musician

By Mike Boehm, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 18, 2008

Chris Gaffney, a roots-music omnivore whose earthy aplomb and offhand mastery of many styles made him a quintessential Southern California bar musician -- but who also earned international regard for his heartfelt and witty songwriting -- has died. He was 57.

Gaffney had been getting treatment for liver cancer that was diagnosed in February. His brother Greg said he died Thursday morning at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, where family members rushed him after a fall in his Costa Mesa home.

FOR THE RECORD:
Gaffney obituary: The obituary of musician Chris Gaffney in Friday's California section said the song "Artesia" was on his 1990 album "Chris Gaffney and the Cold Hard Facts." It was on his 1992 release "Mi Vida Loca." —

Gaffney toured extensively over the last nine years as a member of Dave Alvin's backing band, the Guilty Men, playing accordion and guitar and adding vocals, and as lead singer of the Hacienda Brothers, in which he teamed with veteran San Diego guitarist Dave Gonzalez.

But Gaffney had been a presence on the regional bar scene since the 1970s, playing multiple sets each night in small clubs such as the Upbeat in Garden Grove and the Swallows Inn in San Juan Capistrano. It was a hard-won musician's existence that he and Alvin captured in their easygoing honky-tonk number "Six Nights a Week."

"One of the things that may have hindered him commercially was that he couldn't turn it on; he was a hundred percent honest," recalled Alvin, who considered Gaffney his best friend. "If Chris is in a good mood, you get an amazing show; if he was in a bad mood, he wouldn't hide it."

As a songwriter, Gaffney was a peer of Alvin, Los Lobos, X and the Red Hot Chili Peppers in chronicling the life of Southern California. In "Artesia," from the 1990 "Chris Gaffney and the Cold Hard Facts" album, he evoked memories of his teenage years cruising through the San Gabriel Valley -- remembrances stirred by the scent of cow manure carried on the wind from inland dairy farms.

"The Gardens," from the same album, and later recorded by Freddy Fender with the Texas Tornados, was an aching assessment of the void that gang violence leaves in a community's heart -- in this case, Hawaiian Gardens.

But many Gaffney songs reflect the dry, sometimes absurdist, sense of humor that stayed with him in his day-to-day life: "They made a mistake and they called it me," he sang in one jaunty tune; in another lyrical self-description he pegs himself as "a dancing cretin with faraway eyes."

Gaffney sang in a tuneful yet conversational voice that was both sandpapery and sweet. He had no pretentiousness about his music. In a 1992 Times interview, he described taking part in a songwriters panel at a folk festival: "The kids were asking, 'How do you write songs?' I said, 'I'm sitting in front of the TV, having a beer, and something comes to my mind, and I go 'what the hell' and write it down."

Born in 1950 in Vienna, Austria, he grew up mainly in Cypress, the son of a telephone company executive. Tall and solidly built, Gaffney excelled at track and cross country at Western High School in Anaheim and took his licks as a Golden Gloves boxer.

"I always ascribed his cockeyed view of the world to being beat around the head a few too many times," Alvin said.

As he built a critically acclaimed recorded repertoire during the 1990s with three studio albums, including "Mi Vida Loca" and "Loser's Paradise" for Hightone Records, Gaffney was unable to capitalize on it with touring -- tied instead to his bar hero regimen on top of days spent scraping hulls at a Newport Beach boatyard.

Gaffney accepted the bar-musician's lot with equanimity: "I was a working guy before becoming an unheralded roots-music recording eminence, and I continue to do that. If they don't want to put out an album, I'll go and do my day job," he told The Times in 1999. What sustained him, he said, was "the music, and I love the people. You surround yourself with good friends, and you're good to go."

Starting in 1999, though, Gaffney got to live the life of a musical road warrior, with Alvin and then the Hacienda Brothers, touring extensively through the United States and Europe. Alvin said he soon learned not to give Gaffney a weekly advance on his meal money: "He'd give it to some homeless guy or a guy standing at a rest stop begging for change."

With the Hacienda Brothers, who blended classic country and rhythm and blues styles, Gaffney recorded two studio albums and a live release. In December, he and Alvin recorded the song "Two Lucky Bums," a mellow duet to friendship:

Let's make a toast to the times we've had

The good, the crazy, the rough and the bad.

We've survived every one, a couple of losers who won,

And when it's all said and done, we're two lucky bums.

"He might have gone out early, but he did everything he wanted to do," said Greg Gaffney, who played bass beside his brother through many of the bar years. "He loved being on the road, happy in a van with a bunch of buffoons."

In addition to his brother Greg of Costa Mesa, survivors include his wife, Julie, of Costa Mesa; daughter Erika of Houston; sister Helen of Oakland; and brother Robert of Vancouver, Canada.

Services are pending.

mike.boehm@latimes.com

Chris Gaffney 1950 - 2008

2008-04-18T02:11:00.000-07:00

My other big brother, Chris Gaffney passed away
Thursday morning, April 17, 2008.

I really don't know what to say right now but I feel that I have to say something. First of all, I want to again thank everyone that sent messages to Chris and donated funds to his cause. It means more than you'll know to Chris, his family and me. We are still raising money at www.helpgaff.com to help with the existing medical bills and other various expenses including a forthcoming memorial service.

After twenty-some years I have thousands of memories of Chris. Through those years of songs, laughs, countless barrooms, eternal highways, broken hearts, screw-ups, bail outs, close calls, busted strings, elusive dreams, flat tires, stalled engines, hard hangovers, bad gigs, great gigs, in between gigs, tragedies, triumphs, secret jokes, bad TV, worse food and now, tears, Gaffney always had my back. I never had to worry about nothing or nobody if Gaffney was with me. I don't know what I ever did to deserve it but, God, I was blessed to have Chris Gaffney as my best friend.

Chris's and my friend, B.J. in Omaha, said it best for me in a email yesterday. She said that I now have a "wild angel looking out for me." Yeah, I do believe that's true.

I'll still see you in Cuervo, brother.
Dave

Dave Thanks Gaffney Contributors

2008-04-08T16:43:00.000-07:00

Dear friends, fans and everyone else:

I want to sincerely thank everyone who has gone (and will go) to
www.helpgaff.com and donated to the Chris Gaffney cause. I'm really at a loss for words regarding the overwhelming response from so many people to our call for help. Beside your financial donations, your many heartfelt messages of love and support have deeply moved Chris, his family and me. I don't think Chris ever realized how much his music touches people and how truly beloved he is. These are rough financial times for many of us, but your
selfless generosity in the face of that hard reality, has gotten me a bit
misty eyed on more than a couple occasions lately.

I'd also like to thank all the people who are putting together benefit shows across the country. Shows are currently being planned in Austin, Omaha, Houston, San Francisco, Nashville and several other locations. Please let us know at helpgaff.com if you're doing a benefit for Chris so that we can plug it on the site. Later this year I plan on doing a benefit performance in southern California with many longtime friends of mine and Chris's. Check back here or at the Gaff site for information about when and where that will be happening.

My "other big brother" Chris is a fighter and having all of you in his corner have made me even more positive that he will win this fight. Thank you all very, very much.

Dave Alvin
April 8 2008