'Loud and folky' US singer Dave Alvin at Kelly's

Another morning, another motel bed’ is the opening lyric from Eleven Eleven, Dave Alvin’s latest album.

The American singer, who’s clocked up over 30 years on the road, plays Kelly’s Bar in the city this Friday as part of this year’s Galway Arts Festival.

That opening salvo of the song might initially seem world weary, but the amped-up sound of Alvin’s latest is far from that.

“I have a home in California and I’m there, sometimes!” he laughs. The past year especially has been predominantly touring. It’s not a bad life; there are things about it I don’t like, and there are things I love. I get to play music, to do something that I love to do – I count myself among the lucky ones.”

Alvin’s career began when he formed The Blasters with his brother Phil in 1979. He left that group in 1986 to join a band called X, and launched his solo career the following year. Performing has been a constant, and something that he continues to learn from.

“You try to bring something to each gig,” he says. “You make a new mistake every night! ‘Hey, remember that night you played Chicago back in 1999? Oh yes, the night I broke the E string!’. The truck stops, motels and airports all blend into one blur, but the gigs themselves – I can remember most of the ones I’ve played.”

Eleven Eleven was recorded ‘in the round,’ with Dave and his band sharing a room when they put down their tracks. This live feel is important to the singer.

“I tend to record that way; I like the sound of musicians actually playing together,” he explains. “In the eighties this thing developed where people would layer the tracks. It still goes on to this day, in pop music, where they’ll start with the kick drum. They’ll get that recorded and then it’s ‘now, let’s do the cymbal’. I’m the old school of ‘get everybody looking at each other’.”

He may have a certain way of recording, but when it came to writing for Eleven Eleven Alvin decided to shake it up a bit.

“I did something I rarely do, which was writing the songs on the road,” he says. “When I had a week off here and there, I’d go in and record a song or two. Back on the road, write some more, go back in and record another couple of songs.

“Normally, when I make a record I’ll take four or five months off and it’s a big ordeal. This one was more like ‘hey, this is not a bad song, let’s record it’. So that worked out kind of nice.”

Johnny Ace is a standout song on an impressive record. Ace was a blues singer who died playing Russian roulette in 1954. The song helped Dave to face a tragedy in his own life.

“The album I did previous to this was called Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women and one of the Guilty Women was a girl named Amy Ferris,” he says. “There’s a song on Eleven Eleven about Amy called Black Rose of Texas. Amy had committed suicide, and before I wrote Black Rose of Texas I wrote Johnny Ace.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.