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Dave Alvin is fast approaching the age where the combination of wisdom, talent, and an aging voice all combine to give his music a gravitas it may have not always had. Dave Alvin's new record Eleven Eleven is due out on June 21. Dave's website has a prominent quote on the front page:

    "There are two types of folk music: quiet folk music and loud folk music. I play both."

From his work with the Blasters to his modern folk tales to his work with his backing band The Guilty Me (and more recently The Guilty Women) he has successfully straddled the worlds of folk, rock, and country. I imagine this new record will be no different. In fact the first song off it reminds one of early rock a laBo Diddly. Here is "Run Conejo Run" from Eleven Eleven. It's a song about a young man trying to outrun his past and his origins.

Dave Alvin turns it up. The intensity, the focus, the volume. On Alvin's new album Eleven Eleven, the man who many credit with pioneering what has come to be known as 'roots rock,' revisits the burning, guitar-centered blues rock that initially defined his career along with his band The Blasters in the late 1970s. After The Blasters, Alvin explored the path of American folk music, a road that led to classic albums and Grammy wins (for his album Public Domain: Songs from the Wild Land), establishing him as one of America's most distinguished songwriters and California's de facto roots music ambassador. Fast forward to Eleven Eleven and Dave is ready to raise the stakes again, calling on some Blasters including his brother Phil, with whom he duets for the first timeever on record. The inaugurals continue with Dave writing all the songs while on the road touring, a first for the seasoned performer. The new method clearly sparked new ideas for Alvin, with the blistering guitar runs and Bo Diddley beat of ''Run Conejo Run'' sidling up alongside the gentle finger-picking of the tremolo-soaked ''No Worries Mija.'' Eleven Eleven also features ''Harlan County Line,'' the song featured, along with an Alvin cameo as himself, in FX original series Justified and Alvin's highest and fastest-selling digital single ever. 

Front cover only.

1. Harlan County Line
2. Johnny Ace is Dead
3. Black Rose of Texas
4. Gary, Indiana 1959
5. Run Conejo Run
6. No Worries Mija
7. What's Up With Your Brother?
8. Murrietta's Head
9. Manzanita
10. Dirty Nightgown
11. Two Lucky Bums