Guitar great Dave Alvin brings psychedelic supergroup the Third Mind to the Bay Area
Legendary roots-music guitarist and songwriter Dave Alvin bring his exploratory new project the Third Mind to the Bay Area for three shows in Petaluma, Santa Cruz and San Francisco with support from neo-psychedelic vets the Rain Parade.
Alvin got his start making a unique mix of rockabilly, country, early rock and roll, blues and R&B with the Blasters, the band he started with his brother Phil in Downey, California in the late '70s. Mentored by blues vocalist Big Joe Turner (who the brothers would follow from gig to gig in Los Angeles), the two brothers were as seasoned as a pair of musicians in their 20s could be when the Blasters came together with drummer Bill Bateman and bassist John Bazz.
The new band would record it's debut independent album American Music over two days in a living room studio, bashing out a mix of originals and songs by the likes of Billy Haley and Jimmie Rogers that wiped away the boundaries between roots-music styles. Along with country/rockabilly-influenced punk group X and East LA contemporaries Los Lobos, the Blasters brought a sense of history to the sonic stew of the Los Angeles scene. The band's reputation as a firebrand live act led to tour dates with acts as varied as psychobilly icons the Cramps, country heroes Asleep at the Wheel and '70s rock favorites Queen.
The band would sign to Slash/Warner Bros. for their acclaimed eponymous sophomore album in 1981, a record that established the Blasters as one of the top rising rock bands in the U.S. That same year, the guitarist contributed to the seminal 1981 album by songwriter Chris Desjardins and his all-star band the Flesh Eaters -- which featured X's rhythm section of John Doe (bass) and DJ Bonebrake (playing marimba and assorted percussion) alongside Blasters drummer Bateman and future Los Lobos member Steve Berlin on saxophone -- entitled A Minute To Pray, a Second to Die.
Two more hit records for the Blasters -- Non Fiction in 1983 and Hard Line two years later -- would follow before Dave Alvin departed for his own successful solo career. He would also regularly work with other musicians, taking over as lead guitarist in X around the same time he left the Blasters, playing with the acoustic roots X side project the Knitters and touring with raunchy country/punk singers Mojo Nixon and Country Dick Montana as the Pleasure Barons.
Alvin's more recent efforts have teamed the guitarist with a variety of co-conspirators. He has worked extensively with backing band the Guilty Women and reunited with his brother for a couple of albums featuring blues covers, toured with the Flesh Eaters and recorded the band's first album in decades -- 2019's I Used to Be Pretty -- and recorded an acclaimed 2018 collaboration with noted songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore entitled Downey to Lubbock.
He also founded his all-star project the Third Mind that found him using what the guitarist described as "the Miles Davis technique," entering the recording studio without rehearsal or prepared arrangements and playing extended psychedelic versions of songs by Alice Coltrane, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Roky Erickson's 13th Floor Elevators with a line-up featuring bassist Victor Krummenacher (Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker, Monks of Doom), guitarist David Immergluck (Counting Crows, Monks of Doom, John Hiatt), and drummer Michael Jerome (Richard Thompson, Better Than Ezra). The band's eponymous debut was released on Yep Rock Records in 2020, but plans for the band to tour were thwarted by the pandemic.
The group would reconvene to record a second album -- The Third Mind 2 -- that was released last fall. Shifting away from the instrumental focus of their first effort, the follow-up features Seattle-based singer Jesse Sykes (who provided vocals on the debut's version of the blues standard "Morning Dew") on all six tracks, covering songs recording in the late '60s by the Electric Flag, Fred Neil and Dillard and Clark along with the majestic original tune "Tall Grass" penned by Alvin and Sykes. The new album took more of a languid, cosmic country bent, but the extended takes -- most ranging 8-10 minutes in length -- still gave the players ample room for sonic exploration.
The band made its live debut at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass last year with guest guitarist Mark Karan (Bob Weir's Ratdog, the Other Ones, the Gilmour Project) sitting in for Immergluck with second album keyboardist Willie Aaron (Leonard Cohen, Van Dyke Parks) also joining the Third Mind onstage for a spectacular performance. The band returns to the San Francisco Bay Area this week for a string of three dates at the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma and Moe's Alley in Santa Cruz before ending up at the Chapel in San Francisco Saturday night. Their special guests for the three performances will be Paisley Underground favorites the Rain Parade.
Founded in Los Angeles in 1981 David Roback and Matt Piucci (who were roommates while attending Carlton College in Minnesota), the band originally played punk-informed garage rock under the moniker the Sidewalks. Growing to include Roback's brother on bass, Will Glenn on keyboards and violin and later Eddie Kalwa on drums, the group changed its name as it moved in a different direction, drawing on the sounds of seminal LA bands Love and the Byrds for a modern take on psychedelic rock.
The chiming guitars of the band's self-released 1982 debut single "What She's Done To Your Mind" and a growing local following led to a deal with Enigma Records, who issued the band's landmark first full-length album Third Rail Power Trip. The record established the Rain Parade as one of the leading lights of the burgeoning Paisley Underground scene that included the Bangles, the Dream Syndicate, Green on Red and the Three O'Clock. While David Roback would depart the band to form Opal (which later evolved into the popular alternative-rock group Mazzy Star), the Rain Parade continued, releasing the celebrated EP Explosions in the Glass Palace followed by a move to Island Records for a live album recorded in Tokyo and their sophomore record Crashing Dream before splitting up in 1986.
The band eventually reformed in 2012, playing its first reunion gig at Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco and teaming with fellow Paisley Underground favorites the Dream Syndicate, the Three O'Clock and the Bangles for a pair of shows in SF and LA the following year. Those bands collaborated on the 3 x 4 collection in 2018 that featured those four bands covering each others' songs. Last summer, the Rain Parade released its first new album in almost four decades, the well-received Last Rays of a Dying Sun.
The Third Mind with Rain Parade
Thursday, Jan. 18, 8 p.m. $32-$47
Mystic Theatre
Friday, Jan. 19, 8 p.m. $32-$35
Moe's Alley
Saturday, Jan. 20, 8 p.m. $32-$35
The Chapel