Looking like a pair of archetypal men of the West, Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore pick up their guitars and face each other like old gunslingers, eventually conversing enough musically to sync up—one electric, one acoustic—as they begin their two-man show.
In many ways, the two musicians couldn’t be more different. One is from California, the other from Texas; one tall, the other shorter; one with a deep baritone, the other with a keening, distinctive tenor.
Then, of course, there is the difference in their guitars—Alvin’s stinging electric leads, honed in driving bands like The Blasters and most recently firing up the psychedelic band The Third Mind, almost don’t fit with the gentler, steady acoustic work of Gilmore.
But the two have addressed these differences agreeably, first on their initial duo album Downey to Lubbock in 2018, and again in their 2024 follow-up, Texicali. The formats on each album were the same—Alvin would take the lead on one song, Gilmore would take the next. Alvin’s band, The Guilty Ones, would back them both (and Jon Langford of the Mekons would design both covers).
On each album, they’d collaborate on just one song. For the newer one, it was their declarative, defiant “We’re Still Here,” with which they began their show at the Birchmere, the venerable Virginia club where both recalled playing decades ago.
From there, their show was a pleasing back-and-forth mix of songs they’d covered for their albums together, along with highlights from each individual’s catalog. That meant Alvin’s deep “Dry River” and Gilmore’s “Tonight I Think I’m Gonna Go Downtown,” a song he said he’d be forever dedicating to Joe Ely, his fellow Flatlander who died in December and had recorded it back in 1978.
To be honest, one missed the kick of the band that backed them on both their albums and previous tours, providing a strong underpinning for their material. But the starkness of the setup had its benefits, as in their version of Brownie McGhee’s sobering story song “Betty and Dupree” and in Alvin’s song about the violent death of a recording star in “Johnny Ace is Dead.” There was a sense of intimate song sharing that was the basis of the duo’s first road pairing.
It was easier, too, to identify the distinct qualities each songwriter brought. The lanky Gilmore was spacier, though occasionally profound, in his songs, while his lengthy, convoluted raps between them were always amusing. Alvin succeeds with simplicity in his approach, often name-dropping collaborators in his recent songs—Bill Morrissey on the record, and Tom Russell in a new song he showcased, “The Big One.”
Eventually, there was some assistance on stage from an unexpected source—Lenny Kaye, the Patti Smith Group guitarist and rock archivist, who opened the show solo in advance of the release of his first solo album, Goin’ Local, on July 17. That it’s also on Yep Roc, home of the Alvin-Gilmore duo albums, made the East Coast bill make more sense (Gilmore said he had never met Kaye until days earlier).
With a geographic triangulation that now stretched from California to Texas to New York, Kaye’s slashing presence made for a bigger sound, and an extra electric soloist added for a second electric soloist for the show’s final six songs. They included a singalong to The Youngbloods’ “Let’s Get Together,” Gilmore’s classic “Dallas,” Alvin’s enduring “4th of July,” and The Blasters’ rocking “Marie Marie.”
Kaye’s eight-song solo opening set reflected his own past as a garage rock high priest and producer, playing a song from the obscure UK band the Weather Prophets he put to wax. Because he co-wrote Waylon Jennings’ autobiography, he played “Love of the Common People,” which the Texas outlaw had recorded in 1967.
Perhaps owing to the country tilt of the headliners (or at least ace Texas songwriters), he played Townes Van Zandt’s “You Are Not Needed Now.” And to cover his long run in the Patti Smith Group, he read from his own 2021 book Lightning Striking about the making of her groundbreaking debut Horses. Still, he played something from three years later, “Ghost Dance,” which may have better displayed how his peerless guitar chords shaped the group’s sound.
