King Of California At City Winery

This is the 25th anniversary of the release of Dave Alvin's great record, King Of California, and he's touring to promote the reissue.  This may sound a little cheesy but really, this was a *great* record and marked a significant change in his career and (to some small extent) in roots music.  And he was touring with his original producer, Greg Liesz and longtime accomplice Christy McWilson.  So this was another case of as soon as we heard about him coming to City Winery Boston on July 19th, that we got tickets right away.  And they were pretty good, dead center and just a couple of tables back.

Met Sarah and Dave downtown and we had dinner at Beerworks on Canal Street, just a couple of blocks from the Winery, on a Friday night in late July.  Luckily there was basically no crowd for a Friday night (the Bruins weren't playing) and we got a good dinner and several good beers.  Over at the Winery of course they did not have good beer, but we did what we could and settled in.

Christy McWilson opened and did a fun set of California folk with a little Laurel Canyon mixed in.  Specifically, she closed by bringing up the woman from the merch tent she'd bonded with lately over a Linda Ronstadt song and the two duetted on Different Drum.  Of course we all sang along.

Pretty soon after that Dave and Greg came out, Dave on a beat up old acoustic that he stuck to all night and Greg with a rack of guitars, laps steels (he had two lap steels, one of which was a beautiful walnut thing that almost looked like a dulcimer), mandolins, and probably a few banjos and ukuleles.

They'd been doing the album track for track and basically stuck to that:

King of California
Barn Burning
Fourth of July
Goodbye Again
East Texas Blues
Every Night About This Time
Riverbed Rag
Bus Station
Mother Earth
Blue Wing
Little Honey
(I Won't Be) Leaving
What Am I Worth
Border Radio

Encore:
Abilene
Dry River

This was edge-of-your-seat stuff for a Dave Alvin fan.  Every song was true to the record in one way, but included a few opportunities for Dave and Greg to expand it out.  Christy did a very good job of backup, though the performances by Rosie Flores and Syd Straw on the record are iconic and can't really be matched.

And then they encored with two of Dave's best songs.  We would have loved to see him cover this setlist with his full band, but this was lots of fun.

Saw Kate and Mager and a bevy of SMC fans on the way out.  I think the room had been sold out, there were only a few tickets left when I last checked.