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Written by Glenn BurnSilver
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Friday, 08 December 2006 |
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 There is a popular misnomer about The Blasters. Despite the band’s rockabilly and blues leanings, it’s best not to let bandleader Phil Alvin hear you say the band plays roots music, a term commonly misused with The Blasters.
“The idea of roots music is an analogy that doesn’t sit well with me,” Alvin said during a phone interview from his home in Downey, Calif.
“If the analogy of a tree is supposed to be me then I would say I play trunk music. Then there are branch musics, and there are leaves that fall off at the end of the year. Do I want to be a leaf that eventually withers and falls off? No. Do I want to be a branch? If I’m going to be a branch, I want to be a thick branch. I would much rather be a trunk than any of the branches or the leaves. And would I want to stick my head in the mud and be the roots? No.”
Instead, it would be more appropriate to say The Blasters play American music, a term Alvin prefers, and one that reflects the broad mixture of styles that make up the band’s sound. When considering that fact that Alvin, along with his brother, Dave (who left the band in 1986), learned at the feet of legends T-Bone Walker and Big Joe Turner—artists who merged blues, jazz and even a touch of country—it makes sense. The brothers Alvin received a hands-on lesson in the history of modern music, passed down to them, just as it had been passed down to Walker and Turner and other musicians.
The Alvins playing was further strengthened by their culturally diverse Downey neighborhood that included “Okies, Louisianans, African-Americans and Chicanos.”
Too easily written off as a rockabilly band, The Blasters easily roll through slow burning blues, jumping boogie-woogie, old timey swing jazz, the raw and raucous beginnings of rock ’n’ roll, southern foot stompers, and some country twang. Just about anything else imaginable can find a way into The Blasters sound.
“That’s in the nature of how music is continued,” Alvin said. “I never take credit for music. It was handed to me by people who believed the same thing: music is a context and it is here for a reason. … Music brings forward the collective knowledge of those that came before you in a language that has context. Language only has meaning if it has context. Music has context and provides that meaning.”
Alvin paused for a moment, before he respectfully added.
“Those musicians (Walker and Turner) were the smartest men I’ve ever known. I learned from them. I’m over-educated.”
With The Blasters, there is a history greater than their collective years. But when you get down to the, uh, roots of it, one thing stands out: The Blasters musical legacy cannot be matched, only carried on.
Glenn BurnSilver is a freelance writer who lives in Fort Collins.
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DON'T GO TRYING TO CHANGE TO PLEASE ME
Speaking with The Blasters front man Phil Alvin, it is clear he has frustrations with the record industry. When The Blasters took their first album into Warner Bros. Records, they were told they sounded, strangely enough, too much like themselves.
“I’ll never forget it,” Alvin said with a disbelieving laugh. “They said, ‘Phil, can you sing with a little less emotion. And David, you’re playing to much like yourself.’ Those were the first two comments I got from a record company. What occurred to me right then was if painters at the turn of the century had producers and A&R men, someone might have said to Picasso, ‘Can you brighten up that red.’ It makes no sense.”
Glenn BurnSilver
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TO GO TO THE SHOW
• The Blasters
• Doors 8 p.m.; show 9 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 9
• Aggie Theatre, 204 S. College Ave., Fort Collins
• $12; 482-8300
• www.theblasters.com | Only registered users can write comments.
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