DAVE ALVIN SAYS that he’s playing the guitar pretty well these days, but the fact is, he’s happy to be playing at all. And the larger fact is, he’s pretty darn thrilled to even be here. Back in 2020, the singer-songwriter and guitarist was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Soon after, his doctors gave him worse news: He also had stage 4 colorectal cancer that spread to his liver. “Oh, and I’ve got this lung cancer that keeps returning,” he adds.
Since then, Alvin — a legend in roots rock, country and punk, who founded his onetime band the Blasters in 1979 before embarking on an illustrious solo career — has endured a host of surgeries, and he now reports that he’s in remission. “You learn so much when you go through this kind of thing,” he says, “but one of the biggest things I’ve learned is you don’t beat cancer — you just learn to live with it.” He sighs.
