The roar of a crowded stadium, tires squealing on slick blacktop, the pop of a celebratory champagne cork or the resounding boom of fireworks — what does America sound like?
America sounds like the Alvin brothers.
Dave and Phil Alvin are perhaps best known as the founders of the indisputably seminal early Los Angeles punk roots band The Blasters. Founded in 1979, the group made famous what they called “American Music,” a raucous original blend of genres including blues, rock ‘n’ roll, punk, rhythm and blues and rockabilly, over the course of four albums in the early ‘80s before Dave — the group’s primary tunesmith — left the group.
Though The Blasters continued on with slight lineup changes through to today, the Alvin brothers collaborations were sporadic. They came together to record songs for the 2013 soundtrack to “The Ghost Brothers of Darkland County,” a musical written by Stephen King and John Mellencamp, featuring songs by Elvis Costello, Taj Mahal and Kris Kistofferson, produced by T Bone Burnett.
They also sang a duet for Dave’s last Yep Roc release, “Eleven Eleven.”
Then, just last year, the brothers reunited for their newly acclaimed collaboration, “Common Ground: Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin Play and Sing the Songs of Big Bill Broonzy,” their first full album together in almost 30 years.
The legendary bluesman had been a major influence on the brothers’ early musical works and style.
Now, the Treehouse Café, Lynwood’s own premiere live music venue, will host Dave Alvin and Phil Alvin with The Guilty Ones for a special one-night-only concert event at 8 p.m. Thursday, July 2.
Eddie Williams, a former radio DJ, music director for KROQ-FM in Los Angeles and the Treehouse Café’s original lead booking agent, said the show is sure to be one of the venue’s best ever.
He knew the Alvin brothers back in L.A., Williams said, and had long hoped to get them to play on Bainbridge.
“I tried to get them once but it didn’t work out,” he explained. Then, this year, things came together.
“At first it was just Dave Alvin and his band, and then we just found out a couple of weeks ago that Phil is going to be on the tour,” he said. “We really lucked out.”
In the brothers’ original group, The Blasters, it was Phil’s voice, Williams said, “that was the signature lead.”
They were making, he said, “this amazing American music at a time when we had Black Flag and Suicidal Tendencies and the Dead Kennedys, and they stood out and they still had that punk energy, yet they were doing this really fine, extremely authentic, music with that sort of mid ’80s punk edge.
“There was nothing else going on like it,” he added.
Critics and musicians agreed, and The Blasters’ unique blended sound has been cited as an influence by the varied likes of Los Lobos and Dwight Yoakam, both of whom opened for the band early in their careers. The Blasters themselves performed with a variety of influential acts of the day including X, Black Flag, The Cramps and even Queen.
Rolling Stone hailed their “bright, raw playing, terrific taste and …[Phil’s] full-bodied vocals,” while in the Village Voice reportedly wrote that Dave was “a major songwriter, one with John Fogerty’s bead on the wound-tight good times of America’s tough white underbelly.”
The Lynwood show begins at 8 p.m. and is strictly for patrons 21-and-over only.
Tickets are on sale now via www.treehousebainbridge.com; the cost varies between $26 and $38 depending on desired and available seating.
The Treehouse Café is a pub and pizzeria located in the historic Lynwood Center neighborhood on the south end of the island.
Double threat
What: Rock ‘n roll heroes Dave and Phil Alvin in concert with The Guilty Ones.
When: 8 p.m. Thursday, July 2.
Where: The Treehouse Café (4569 Lynwood Center Road NE).
Admission: Tickets are between $26 and $38; visit www.treehousebainbridge.com to purchase.
* This concert is for those 21-and-over only.
