Dave Alvin and The Guilty Women bring folk rock to D.C. area

Dave Alvin, Grammy award winner for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 2000, never strays far from his native California in song. His long and sturdy career as a guitarist, singer and songwriter has paired him with the top talents of country, rock, folk, blues and roots rock, but he never hit the road with an all-female band until a set with The Guilty Women at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco opened a new door.

The upshot was “Dave Alvin and The Guilty Women,” an album of a dozen numbers featuring Alvin and seven spectacular artists who have played and recorded with the likes of Bob Dylan, BeauSoleil, Leon Redbone and Buddy Guy and racked up awards of their own.

Setting out with the dream lineup of Cindy Cashdollar and Nina Gerber on guitar, Laurie Lewis, Christy McWilson and Amy Farris on violin and vocals, Sarah Brown on bass and Lisa Pankratz on drums, Alvin launched a nationwide tour that runs into October and stops this week in Annapolis and Alexandria.

“These are great musicians, all women I’ve worked with in the past, so everything clicked,” Alvin says. “It sounds corny, but playing with them is part of the healing process, getting over the death of my best friend by surrounding myself with female energy.”

The recording is released in tandem with a second CD, “The Man of Somebody’s Dreams: A Tribute to the Songs of Chris Gaffney.” Alvin and Gaffney grew up together in Downey, California. Upon learning that Gaffney had liver cancer, Alvin gathered sixteen of their friends, among them Boz Skaggs, Los Lobos, The Iguanas, Freddy Fender and Robbie Fulks, to cut an album to raise money for the medical bills. Alvin’s own “Artesia” is included, a nostalgic piece inspired by Gaffney about the glut of California tract houses obliterating the farms they remembered from the 1960s and the smell of cows carried aloft by blast funnel wind.

“Chris never got the break in music that he deserved,” Alvin says. “All the artists I contacted loved him and were eager to help in any way possible. He had so many friends I could have cut another album.”

Alvin’s recording with The Guilty Women is equally diverse. The upbeat “Boss of the Blues” recalls the time he and his brother as teenagers met blues shouter Big Joe Turner, while “California’s Burning” turns serious and laments the threat posed by recent fires. The closing number, “Que Sera, Sera,” is the snappiest version out and the perfect ending to the rich assortment.

“In the past, my personal experiences were a little more hidden in my compositions, but the older I get the more biographical they become,” he says. “I’ve played ‘Que Sera, Sera’ that way before, usually when I get to the third encore. It reflects my philosophy of life.”