Dave Alvin is a fighter. In the 1980s, when Dave and his older brother, Phil Alvin, shared studio and stage as co-founders of Los Angeles punkabilly band The Blasters, they frequently fought each other. They also fought musically, tussling over every note as the four-man band wrangled many great tunes. In that respect, their working relationship may have been similar to the sibling push-pull output of Ray and Dave Davies in the Kinks and Liam and Noel Gallagher in Oasis. Consider “American Music,” “Marie Marie,” and “Border Radio,” all from the band’s 1981 sophomore album The Blasters, as examples of how internal conflict can lead to successful collaboration.
In the years following Dave’s departure from the Blasters, in 1986, the brothers often sparred anew as they drifted through the transom of their shared lives—sometimes via Blasters re-ups, other times in self-aware duets like “What’s Up with Your Brother?,” from Dave’s 2011 solo album Eleven Eleven, or in joint projects like 2014’s Common Ground: Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin Sing the Songs of Big Bill Broonzy and 2015’s Lost Time, the latter featuring down-home covers of songs from Big Joe Turner, James Brown, Willie Dixon, and others.
Through all the sibling conflict, the one constant, which had intertwined the brothers since they grew up together under the same roof in Downey, California, was a shared passion for music—and, for much of that time, for record collecting. Teenagers as the 1970s got underway, the Alvin brothers were notorious as the youngest, savviest 78 collectors in Southern California. “Phil and I, we started collecting 78s and 45s real early in our lives, and we became really adept at 78 collecting,” Dave told me during our interview. “That was something my brother and I shared. For us, that’s really where we bonded as brothers—besides all the blood feuds,” he concluded with a knowing, brotherly laugh.
Eventually, Dave carved out a fine career as a solo artist and songwriter steeped in the deep-rooted traditions of the blues, country, rockabilly, and folk. With Romeo’s Escape, his flag-planting 1987 solo debut on Epic, Alvin established his solo lane, leading to a decade-plus of genre-driven works on Hightone before settling in at Yep Roc, his label home since 2004.
“You never know what people
