Guitarist Dave Alvin, who brings his newest band, The Third Mind, to Moe’s Alley this week, says he doesn’t know what’s going to happen 83% of the time on stage with his ‘‘psychedelic-folk-jam-band.”
Yes, this is the same singer/songwriter who played with the LA roots-rock band, The Blasters, as well as the alternative band, X and the country-rock band, The Knitters. He’s written hits including “Marie Marie” (recorded by Shakin’ Stevens and Buckwheat Zydeco) and “Long White Cadillac”(recorded by Dwight Yoacham) and released albums and toured with The Guilty Women and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, with whom he still tours.
But his new efforts, inspired partly by jazz great Miles Davis, are a welcome relief for psychedelic music fans.
“You can’t go on autopilot, you know,” he says from his Southern California home. ‘In The Third Mind you have five people up there and you don’t know where they are going to take you. That keeps the band from going, ‘Oh, God, I don’t want to play this song again.”
The band is a throwback to the 1960s good old days of jamming and improvisation that stretches songs while stretching minds. If you miss the days of the early Grateful Dead–which, based on the number of Dead cover bands playing around town, many do–The Third Mind is a beautiful blast from the past soaring into a wild future.
Its last two appearances at Moe’s were this reviewer’s favorite shows of the year, like finding a lost treasure I never thought I’d see again. The songs, many covers from the 1960s, such as “Morning Dew”, were long, swirling trips played by rock musicians who improvise like jazz masters, uptempo, fun and freaky. Absolutely mind-blowing.
Alvin says he and bassist Victor Krummenacher talked for years about making an album outside of their comfort zone using the free-form techniques pioneered by Miles Davis on albums like ‘Bitches Brew” and ‘Jack Johnson” with no rehearsals and no written out parts,”just agree on the key, turn on the tape machine and see what happens.”
Compared to so many contemporary rock bands that program their shows around lights and staging, their live sets take you on an adventure, reminding audiences what it’s like not to know what’s coming next and hang on for the thrilling ride.
The band, which formed in 2020, includes bassist Krummenacher from Camper Van Beethoven, Monks of Doom, and Eyelids; singer Jesse Sykes from her Seattle-based group, Jesse Sykes and The Sweeter Hereafter; drummer Michael Jerome who has played with Richard Thompson, Better Than Ezra and John Cale; and touring guitarist Mark Karan, who has toured with Bob Weir and Phil Lesh and is beloved by Deadheads.
Guitarist David Immerglück from Counting Crows, Monks of Doom, Camper Van Beethoven and John Hiatt plays on the band’s studio recordings.
“Victor and I started discussing this idea around the year 2000,” says Alvin. “But it really kind of boils down to finding people who were into the idea of no rehearsal and going in without any
idea of what you’re going to play. A lot of guys aren’t into that. And so you’d ask people, and they would say, ‘No, that’s okay, man’. You know, or ‘Good luck,’ you know?’’
But he rounded up a crew of musicians ready to take chances on the tightrope.
“Then as far as the vocalist, I had known Jesse since the late 90s. I was a big fan of her approach to singing because it was so unique. Each word gets highlighted. Like each word’s under a microscope when she sings. If we would have had a more, let’s say, traditional kind of vocalist, it would have been a more traditional kind of band.”
And, he says, unlike so many singers, she doesn’t mind stepping back during long guitar solos.
Where’d the name come from?
“Well, it’s based on the William Burroughs thing of, when you have two separate minds, you have two different people with two separate minds and two different sets of experiences and they come together, and they create something that creates the third mind.”
Alvin says he was more of a fan of Quicksilver growing up,over the Dead. But he loved Dead jams like ‘Dark Star”.
“Jerry Garcia made mistakes happily,” he says. “You know, same thing with Neil Young, or early Mike Bloomfield. Mistakes to me are just the breeding ground of ideas. And they’re not things to be avoided.”
His strangest gig was opening for Queen in arenas during their heyday, when the Blasters didn’t really know Queen’s music. He got to see Jimi Hendrix when he was 13, which set a bar for wanting surprises during concerts.
“It’s something that’s been stamped out of pop and rock and roll music, the element of surprise and the element of discovery. You know, and it’s just like everything’s just a gig. It’s just the job. Punch your time clock stand in this spot. Play your eight-bar solo and if it’s honed right, it can work. It can be effective, but it bores me, you know. I don’t like acts where I know what’s going to happen.”
And that’s what makes The Third Mind a must-see.
