This post has a few purposes. First, to test out the embedded audio player plugin from WPaudio. It works well in firefox, any IE users out there? How does it handle? Second to highlight the songs of one of my musical idols. Third, to start getting my recordings online in a systematic way that I can keep track of them. This will be done by a category and tag system. I will probably put another page up with songs hotlinked in some sort of manner.

Dave is an amazing storyteller and musician. Very emotional, with a deep gritty voice that screams out with a life of its own. A quote from his website is telling: “There are two kinds of folk music: quiet folk music and loud folk music. I play both.” He’s been around the block, starting out with The Blasters as a rockabilly outfit, X (with Joh Doe and Exene Cervenka) and then moving into a solo career as Dave Alvin and the Guilty Men, eventually just Dave Alvin.

He is not afraid to experiment as well. His album Ashgrove, where blues and a more traditional folk-style songs were intertwined, is a testament to this. The dualism between these two styles was mildly standoffish at first, but it grew on me. My opinion is that Blackjack David and King of California are his most beautiful works. I highly recommend them. I’m not entirely sure if he was the original author of the song, but his version of it is more beautiful than I could ever do it justice for.

King of California

I wasn’t very happy with this take. It was all done in one take, with the guitar solo dubbed over in a first pass. I was being lazy and didn’t feel like editing or redoing. This song is very familiar for me to play and I mostly just wanted to test out my new recording equipment. I got a small 2 track converter to get my guitar and microphone into my computer. It’s a Tascam US-144 and I’m using a MXL 990 cardioid pattern condenser microphone. No pre-amps or effects, just straight line in to the computer into Garage Band. Only did a minor amount of post processing. A little reverb on the vocals and a bit of a tinge to the solo dub. This is my first recording NOT with the built in microphone on my macbook. My guitar is an Epiphone Limited Edition Riviera Custom P93. It s very simple setup and serves my home recording purposes nicely!

Here is a live performance of Dave Alvin doing the song.