VIA PRESS RELEASE | Craft Recordings and HighTone Records proudly announce a new deluxe reissue of Blackjack David, the esteemed 1998 album from GRAMMY®-winning Americana icon Dave Alvin. Featuring highlights such as “Abilene,” “Evening Blues,” “California Snow,” and “Blackjack David,” the album will be available on October 16 on 2-LP, CD, and digital (including hi-res) and is available for pre-order/pre-save.
This special reissue also includes two bonus tracks: “Dixie Highway Blues,” which was written for the album but originally released on 2008’s The Best of the HighTone Years, and the previously unreleased “Angel On Your Shoulder,” recorded during the same sessions, with finishing touches added recently by Alvin and his longtime producer, Greg Leisz. Alvin says of the track, “[It] got away and it shouldn’t have, so it’s great to have it be part of the canon now.” Physical formats also feature new liner notes by music journalist and No Depression co-founder, Peter Blackstock.
GRAMMY-winning singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer Dave Alvin (b. 1955) has long been counted among the pioneers of Americana music. A Southern California native, Alvin began his career in 1979 as a founding member of The Blasters, alongside his brother Phil. Their unique blend of punk, rockabilly, and classic American music soon made them a fixture in the early Los Angeles punk scene. By the middle of the decade—after stints with X and The Knitters—Alvin was eager to embark on a solo career, launching with his 1987 debut, Romeo’s Escape.
By the mid-’90s, Alvin was finding his groove in stripped-down settings—a departure from the high-voltage, electric stylings of his earlier work. 1998’s Blackjack David marked the pinnacle of this era, with primarily acoustic arrangements that let his storytelling and emotive vocals take center stage.
Alvin, who shines on the acoustic six-string guitar, reunited with multi-instrumentalist Greg Leisz, who produced his 1994 studio album, King of California, and would go on to helm several of his future releases. Leisz, who also performed a variety of the instrumentation on the album—including lap steel and slide guitar, mandolin, banjo, dobro, and the pedal steel—lent the album a dynamic sound that blended elements of blues, rock, folk, and country.
“I’ve learned from a lot of musicians, but no one has taught me more than my dear friend Greg Leisz,” Alvin asserts. “Working with Greg was like studying for a PHD in guitar playing, singing and producing, particularly on the album Blackjack David, where I let Greg have free reign with his beautiful and sensitive interpretations of my songs. I will never be able to thank him enough for this.”
Setting the tone for Blackjack David is the eerie title track—a traditional tune about a charming outlaw, which Alvin first began playing with The Blasters. The song tells the tale of a woman leaving her husband, baby, and warm home for “Blackjack David”—only to sleep on the cold ground alongside the questionable title character.
The remainder of the tracks (all originals) focus on the human experience, as Alvin spins rich, world-weary narratives of everyday life—from the young woman in “Abilene” who travels from town to town, seeking a better life, to the man who never left his hometown and lives a life of monotony in “From a Kitchen Table.”
Other songs deliver stark social commentary, as Alvin writes from the point of view of a border agent in the heartbreaking “California Snow” and an aging Vietnam vet in “1968,” who is forever haunted by the loss of his best friend in the war. Alvin also sings about love lost—from a relationship that’s slowly dying in “Evening Blues” and an impending breakup in “The Way You Say Good-Bye,” to the haunting album closer, “Tall Trees,” in which a man imagines a former partner returning to him.
Long considered to be a highlight in Alvin’s esteemed career, Blackjack David has received broad praise over the years, including from Americana UK, which called it “The album that elevates Dave Alvin out of the ‘important’ category of Americana artists and firmly into the ‘vital’ classification.” Record Collector magazine admired Alvin’s “thoughtful, literate ruminations on the American condition,” while No Depression called Blackjack David “A perfect album…an essential part of American music’s rich history.”
In his liner notes, Peter Blackstock remembers the 1998 album as a turning point in Alvin’s career: “Looking back, Blackjack David stands tall as an album that significantly expanded Alvin’s acoustic repertoire…. This record helped him find his voice, and be more confident as a singer. Now he doesn’t need help doing that, because he knows how to do it. He just can do it on his own—and he has been for a long time.”
