I understand you wrote or conceived all the songs on the record while out on the road. Is this going to be a winning recipe?

That is a good question. I don’t know, chuckles Alvin. Before this I had only written one or maybe two songs while on the road. It is difficult, because of my life style. It really is, but when I was out on tour with the Guilty Women we had a lot of drivers. We had two or three vehicles so I could sit in the back or ride shotgun in a rental car. Normally, I would turn the car over to Christy McWilson and let her drive and I would throw her ideas I had come up with and say, what do you think of this? I used her as a soundboard. So, yeah I may try and continue doing it but it is hard. You look at people like Willie Nelson and Ernest Tubb who started out writing all their own songs, but the more and more you tour the less time you have.  If you get a little of bit solitude at even say, McDonalds is good even I guess.

‘Eleven Eleven is an album of story songs?
Most of my songs are that way. My template of what a great song is, although you have Gershwin and Cole Porter and the likes as far as contemporary folk or whatever it has always been Marty Robbins and ‘El Paso’ and Chuck Berry and ‘Memphis, Tennessee’. Those are great songs and I find I can say a lot things about a lot of things inside story songs.

There is such a roving feel to your work. Not just the songwriting but also everything about the music lends itself to unbridled freedom? 
Yeah, I like to mix it up. When everything is said, my guitar style, I am basically a blues player. For my songwriting I like to go a lot of different directions and this album has a lot of blues on it. It wasn’t like I sat down and said I was going to do this kind of record. Apart from with King Of California where I said I am going to do an acoustic record I have never done that.

So how do you go about making a record?
When I make a record I will just record the first song and build organically from there. This record has been good, recording wise because there were a lot of breaks between recordings. I would be on tour with the Guilty Women and be home for a week and go into the studio for a couple of days and make a rough recording then be out on the road for a month. Do the same thing again and get to listen and maybe change things from the one I had just done.

I tried not to fuss too much with this record, he adds. Partially, because I was producing it and my attitude is a little bit more Sam Phillips than a lot of people. With Sam it was as much about mood and feel than let’s say getting it right. He wanted to capture the feel and wasn’t so bothered if you played a wrong note. I try to do that anyway, and on this one in particular. It was like we got it another.  We got the mood lets move on to another one, laughs Dave.

One song tends to lead to the next on the album?
I still make albums in the way I view it. I would be a horrible singles act. Even back in the days of The Blasters I was always thinking album and thematically what song leads to the next. Harlan County Line is another example of saying a lot of things and not saying them at the same time.

Guilty Women must have been great for you and how long it lasted with the touring? 
It was a lot of fun till Amy Ferris committed suicide, and then it all got really sad. The Guilty Women was the group I put together when Chris Gaffney died so I wouldn’t look for him on stage. So when we did the Guilty Women tour together Chris was with me in spirit, but it was a joyful spirit opposed to a sad spirit. After Amy died we kept going for another year and it was great and was fun but different, as certain sadness crept in which was unavoidable. So when I thought about writing a song for Amy that turned out to be ‘Black Rose Of Texas’ it was one of those songs you either write or you don’t. There is no middle ground on dealing with things like that. Hopefully, it made her a more joyous than a sad spirit.

Music is a great healer. Is it able to reach places other things don’t?
Music also has the ability to get you through things. Whether it is bad news or romantic issue. You hear a song and the radio and it is like, yes! It has a healing quality, like with the old Sharman guys back in the villages where music was a great healing service. That is a different story but music cuts you off from things.

It is the blues mentality. You take your lumps and live with it. Like my heroes the old guys who played till they died, people like Big Joe Turner, Lightnin’ Hopkins and T-Bone Walker who played till they died and it wasn’t all about money. Music is the poor people’s therapy. Folk songs were the way the old communities expressed their sycosis and dealt with it and explained the word to them selves. I think the reason those songs have lasted for centuries in some cases is because everything you need to know is inside their songs. You may have to root around a little but it is all there.

A little while ago you mentioned Marty Robbins he covered a number of old western songs that were folk songs like the blues heroes you mentioned he too performed till he died. Music was the only thing he knew and it was his life?
Yeah, ‘El Paso’ and ‘Big Iron’ have out lasted their time and become folk songs. Like with ‘Long Black Veil’ it’s thought of as a folk song but it was a commercially written but has transcended that.

Three of the songs that stand out on the album are the duets. The one you do with Christy McWilson reminds me of those recorded by Tom Russell and Katy Moffatt?
I am pleased you like ‘Manzanita’. I will tell her she will appreciate you saying that. I love singing with Christy.

To finish the album with Chris I feel was a masterstroke?
It is another one of those… (hesitates) transcendental moments. Bitter sweet. I kind of get choked up talking about it. It is the last song we recorded together. There were some other songs we had recorded for the record but when I was putting the record together I felt, this is he way to end this record. You have got to have Chris on there!

It sounds as if the duet you recorded with your brother, Phil was a fun thing to do?
Life is too short. I was happy to have Chris in to record  ‘Two Lucky Bums’ before he passed away. The song ‘What’s up With Your Brother?’ with Phil was the same way. It was like the first time we ever sang together. Because, he has such a big powerful voice the only time we did so was like happy birthday to our mom and I felt it was time we did something together.

‘Run Conejo Run’ is a wonderful story song. Where did it come from?
It was about Chris. It was like with ‘Black Rose Of Texas’ and all that I felt I had to tell Chris’ story, his side of the story.

By all accounts it is a pretty neat recording studio where you made the album?
It is a little place. I have recorded a few of my recent albums there. Although The Guilty Women wasn’t it was where I did Ashgrove and West Of the West and is about the size of Sun Studios. The engineer there isn’t afraid of loud guitars. So we could set up in a circle, like we did on Ashgrove and a bit of West Of The West. So there we were bass drums and two electric guitars all sat just looking at one another. It was like they did it at Sun and Chess or one of the other old recording studios. We just played with the amps right there and got the bleed so you really get the sound of the room. The room itself is neat a sound effect room from the 1930s and Hollywood movies so it’s got a bouncy live sound to it and kinda got a little bit of magic there.

Don Heffington plays a big part on the album as he stamps his mark on it?
He has only got to touch a drum and it sounds like Don Heffington. He has got the feel. In a weird ironic twist one of his first gigs as a teenager was with Big Mama Thornton. This was way before he played with Bob Dylan and Emmylou (Harris) and all that stuff. I love the ways he plays. He can really makes a blues shuffle swing.

I notice you have three people play pedal steel?
Rick Shea is on there. I tried to get as many of my old friends on there as possible. The guy playing slide is Danny Ott. He is one my favourite guitar players and was the guitar player in Chris Gaffney’s band The Cold Hard Facts.
Greg Leisz he has been so busy and out of town a lot. He has either been on the road with Bill Frisell or Ray LaMontagne but I managed to get him come play on a couple of tracks.

Gene Taylor he is another who goes a long way back.
Gene now lives in Belgium. He has a blues band there and I was over in October last year, playing lead guitar for him. He plays piano and sings everything Tampa Red to Bo Diddley. I said to him, do you want to come play in the studio? He said, sure. Purposely, for years I kept my distance from when making my solo records from those who played in the Blasters with the exception of Lee Allen who played on my first two Hightone record. Like I said, we aren’t going to be here forever so we might as well still make music together in one form or another.

Apart from music what are your great passions?
I collect Native American art. I love hiking and it is beautiful. It tends to happen in the winter here in California when it is quieter and know some semi-secret places.

I hope the album Man Of Somebody’s Dreams (A Tribute To Chris Gaffney) is still rolling along, nicely. I feel it was a fantastic project?
Thank you. My aim on that was one, pay tribute to Chris and to show he was a pretty good songwriter when he wanted to be. When we did write it always took a little arm-twisting (laughs Dave), it is like that when Tom Russell and I write. It too is an arm-twisting thing but nothing like with Chris. With him it was like, yes, Chris you can do it. Come on lets do it.

What if any are your ambitions in music?
Keep working. Unlike some of my friends who have had plans that have and haven’t always worked I tend to be more organic in my thinking. I just see what happens. One morning I will wake up and know what my next record is going to be. Music for me is a continual. It is what I do.

I bet one thing for sure it will be California inspired?
Growing up in California you heard when I was young. From blues to r & b to Bakersfield country to surf music to Norteno music from across the Mexican border. A music melting pot is what it was (is) and I try to reflect that. You don’t have to have a sense of place to be a great songwriter but it helps. There are great songwriters who have never had that and never looked back. I still roll around in it. Me, Merle Haggard and John Fogarty and people like that we roll around in where we came from.

I feel there is a free spirited feel with few restrictions to your music you tend to go where your heart takes you. That is the beauty of your records?
That is true, there was a time in the late 80s after I had made my first record when the people at CBS Nashville wanted to make a record with all Nashville musicians and songwriters and I passed on it. It did not seem, organic. I just wasn’t natural to me. I did not want to be straight jacketed by anything. If I went into a country bar and they asked me to sit in I may be a T-Bone Walker blues song and if it were a blues bar and they asked me I would do a Webb Pierce song. Because that is the way I am, laughs Dave.