In the 1960s, Jimmie Dale Gilmore told the audience at The Birchmere during a recent performance, “I had been a folksinger in Lubbock, where there was very little demand for that.” Amidst his performances at various coffee shops, where he was making a handful of dollars for a performance, he was paid $400 by the parents of early rock legend Buddy Holly to record one of his songs.

In the roughly six decades since, Jimmie had forgotten about it until his wife found the tape in a box of his old things. “If Buddy Holly’s parents had paid me $400 to record the song,” Dave Alvin said, “I would have remembered the song.

This was just one of many great stories these two legends of Americana shared in their co-headlining bill at The Birchmere on August 29. They have a wealth of material to draw on, having been making music for a long time. Born in Amarillo, Texas, Gilmore formed The Flatlanders with fellow singer-songwriter Joe Ely and Butch Hancock. That band was something like the Velvet Underground of Americana:  their album, released in 1972, barely sold, but their music — together and separately — influenced many of the luminaries of alternative-country, including Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, Neko Case, Uncle Tupelo, The Jayhawks, The Mavericks, Iris DeMent, and the Old 97s. Some of the songs from that era and that record — released in 1990 as More a Legend Than a Band — are stone cold classics. Of “Dallas,” Alvin said, “This is a song Jimmie Dale wrote, that I wish I wrote.”

Gilmore has a mystical, philosophical bent. He even spent time in an ashram in New Orleans, during the 16 years that passed between the release of The Flatlanders album and his solo debut. Introducing “Borderland,” a song on Jimmie and Dave’s new album, Texicali, he gave an intuitive explanations of the epistemological (theory of knowledge) position known as coherentism: “Every single thing in the universe is connected to every other thing in the universe, and to explain it would take infinity. By then it’s changed, and you have to start over.” There’s definite traces of Eastern mysticism in another of his early songs they played, “Tonight I Think I’m Gonna Go Downtown.”

Stream “Borderland” by Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore featuring The Guilty Ones on YouTube:

Dave Alvin comes from half a continent away. He grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey. There, with his older brother Phil, he formed The Blasters in the ’70s, playing lead guitar and acting as the band’s principal songwriter. Throughout the latter years of that decade and the first half of the ’80s, they were part of the explosion of roots music in LA, and helped introduce acts like Los Lobos and Dwight Yoakam to a broader audience. Yoakam covered one of Alvin’s compositions for The Blasters, “Long White Cadillac.” “I know I don’t sing it as well as Dwight Yoakam,” Dave admitted, “but it’s my puppy, and I’m going to take it for a walk.” Dave and Jimmie finished their encore with another Blasters song, “Marie Marie,” which Dave described as “the only zydeco standard ever written by me in Downey, California.”

After leaving the band — Dave and Phil had sibling squabbles to rival the Gallagher brothers — Dave briefly joined X, replacing Billy Zoom on guitar. They recorded Alvin’s song, “Fourth of July.” Introducing the song on Thursday night, he said, “I wrote it about my hometown and about your hometown. That’s the power of songwriting.”

Since the late ’80s, both Alvin and Gilmore have recorded as solo artists, though both have been involved in various projects with other musicians. In 2018, they released their first album together, From Downey to Lubbock, which was followed by this Year’s Texicali. They opened their set with the final track off Texicali, “We’re Still Here.” It’s a poignant tune, given than Gilmore will turn 80 next year and Alvin is a recent cancer survivor.

Watch the official music vidoe for “We’re Still Here” by Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore on YouTube:

Of another track from the album, “Down the 285,” Alvin joked, “This one’s always better in tune. Music is weird that way.” “Blind Owl,” he explained was inspired by Alan Wilson of Canned Heat, who was also an advocate for the California environment, but is also “about all of the friends who’ve gone on to the other side, or may be here with us on this stage.”

Dave noted that From Downey to Lubbock was the first album Gilmore has released that hasn’t had a song written by Butch Hancock, so they made sure to include one on Texicali, though in a radically altered form. “Roll Around” comprised the reggae portion of the evening. Another one of the new songs was actually an old song: “Why I’m Walking” was originally recorded in Nashville in the ’50s by Stonewall Jackson.

Before they recorded together, Gilmore was a part of some train tours that Alvin did with a number of his musical friends. “Those train tours,” he said, “were the most transcendentally happy I’ve ever been.” (And hey, what’s more Americana than playing folk music on a  train?) The name of the train line from Chicago to the West Coast lent its name to a song on the new album: “Southwest Chief.”

The set also included a couple more tunes from Dave’s solo career, “Dry River” and “Johnny Ace Is Dead.” The latter, about the tragic ending to the life of the great R&B singer, “is not on the new album, but it’s an okay song.”

When they came out for their encore, Alvin noted that they hadn’t done any songs from their first album. Bringing out opening act Jon Langford and his band, they played the ’60s flower-power classic “Get Together.”

Jon Langford’s opening set was a welcome surprise. Jon, who was playing with a new project, The Bright Shiners, is a member of the long-running punk band The Mekons. As he brought up during his set, he’s originally from Newport, a dock town in southern Wales where the late Joe Strummer lived for a time; he shared some memories of the Clash frontman and covered one of his later songs, “X-Ray Style.” Jon has been based in Chicago for several decades, where he’s led various alt-country bands, including The Waco Brothers and The Pine Valley Cosmonauts. He’s also a visual artist, and he painted the covers for both of Dave and Jimmie Dale’s albums together. Despite his long career, this was his first time playing The Birchmere.

After his opening number, “The Queen of Hearts,” Jon said, “You have an election coming up. Ask some hard questions.” That was followed by “Awake From Under The Shadows.” “Discarded,” he explained, “confuses industrial relations and sexual relations: getting laid versus getting laid-off.” He played a new song, then introduced “Only Demons Should Apply” as “my mission statement.” He shared the exciting news that The Mekons have a new album coming out before playing one of that band’s songs, “Millionaire.” Next up was a song “for the great town of Seahouses, which has a lovely pebbly beach,” followed by an “anthemic rock song” about the pain scale. “Old Lost Dog” is, unsurprisingly, about an old lost dog; Jon got the audience to provide howls to accompany the song. He closed the set with “I Have A Wish,” which he described as a very optimistic song, “if you like that sort of thing.”

Stream “Old Lost Dog” by Jon Langford and The Bright Shiners on YouTube:

Langford was, as noted, a welcome surprise — he hadn’t been mentioned on the tour info online. And Dave and Jimmie Dale were incredible. Gilmore still sings like an angel, and Alvin is a brilliant guitar player. Blues, folk, country, rock — this night had all of that, and more.

Here are some photos of Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore performing at The Birchmere on August 29, 2024. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Steve Satzberg.

 

Here are some photos of Jon Langford and The Bright Shiners opening for Alvin and Gilmore at The Birchmere. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Steve Satzberg.