Album Review: Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, 'TexiCali'

Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s TexiCali is a testimony to a lifelong friendship and musical partnership between the two musicians. The pair is still traveling down the musical highways that stretches between Alvin’s California and Gilmore’s Texas, spicing up their tunes with ingredients from honky tonk, blues, and country.

The duo revisits Gilmore’s “Borderland,” from Gilmore’s 1996 Braver New World, and delivers a jangling and shimmering country rocker ala the Flying Burritos. Alvin offers up a growling, stomping tribute to Alan Wilson, Canned Heat co-founder, on “Blind Owl,” a song he also reprises on Canned Heat’s recent Finyl Vinyl, replete with stinging leads and howling harmonica wails. On the airy folk ballad “Southwest Chief”—which Alvin started writing with his friend Bill Morrisey and then finished after Morrisey’s death in 2011—Alvin and Gilmore unspool gentle rhythmic layering of guitars as they reminiscence about the “Roots of the Rails” train tours he and fellow musicians did for several years. It’s a nostalgic ode to wanderlust: “Southwest Chief, let your whistle blow/Wherever you’re heading, I want to go.”

The duo serves up a down-to-the-bone blues on their version of Blind Willie McTell’s “Broke Down Engine,” and offers a cinematic take on the late Austin musician Josh White’s “Down the 285,” an ode to the desolation and wonder of the road featuring ethereal lead runs on the bridge that evoke both the loneliness and spiritual freedom of the highway. Jumping and swaying honky tonk meets New Orleans blues meets country rambling and straight-ahead rock and roll on the duo’s take on Stonewall Jackson’s “Why I’m Walking.” “Trying to Be Free” is glittering folk rocker, while the album closes with the celebratory, funky, soul-drenched “We’re Still Here,” a rollicking paean to the duo’s commitment to standing and delivering vibrant roots music.

TexiCali showcases one of the most enduring musical partnerships on the planet. Every song on the album demonstrates the ways that Alvin and Gilmore read each other’s musical direction so well, combining for propulsive rootsy rockers as well as tender folk ballads.