Dave Alvin

This fantastic story by Linda East Brady kicks off our new "Power of a Song" series in which many of our regular contributors along with special guests tell us about a song that has special meaning to them.  We hope you enjoy the series as much as we enjoyed producing it.

Tucson in July is not for sissies. 

Even the cicadas� songs take on a hysterical fever-pitch as the thermometer slides into the low 100s. Relief, in the form of the cooling summer monsoons rolling up from the Baja Sea, usually doesn�t arrive until August.  No, you just have to bear down and suffer the heat.

What better place for a midsummer wedding?  None, so far as we was concerned, when my husband Steve and I planned own nuptials 20 years ago.

�That way I can promise you�ll see fireworks every single anniversary,� Steve quipped. 

I�d met Steve in Tucson, but had followed him away from my beloved desert home the big, bad, and decidedly ugly burg of Los Angeles. But I�d be damned if I was going to be married in that filthy, earthquake-ridden megalopolis. No, I had to have saguaros and roadrunners as my metaphorical bridesmaids.

So, what family and friends weren�t already in Tucson were dragged, grumbling and sweaty, to the desert for a Fourth of July union of East and Brady clans.

Everything was place for a festive sunset wedding with fireworks following, a fancy-ass reception, and, best of all, a gathering of the colorful people we loved � except for one crucial detail.  The reception music.

Now, we had many a fine and shaggy musician friends, but none really liked working weddings, or if they did, their music wouldn�t pass muster with our older kinfolk.  Nor could we leave our reception music to some cheesy DJ, especially after the only one I called hadn�t ever heard our choice for our just-married dance—Santana�s �Europa� � much less possessed the thing. 

I�d caved over the songs that would be sung at my big ol� traditional Catholic wedding.  I was bound that there could be no compromise in my reception music. So the nervous bride went to work on compilation tapes, with tunes ranging from big band to bop, roots rock to reggae, soul to Western swing.

I was pleased with the results, but felt the tape needed something, something Fourth of July-ish. And I didn�t want no stinking John Phillip Sousa.

As the big day approached, the busy bride let slip her dream of the perfect Independence Day song to celebrate the day her independence departed.  

Wedding Eve arrived with an authentic Mexican rehearsal dinner, followed by my man leaving for the traditional night of getting shit-faced with male friends and family.

Bachelor party mission was more than accomplished.  The next morning, when said groom was to help me with any number of last-minute errands � most importantly moving the sound system for my precious reception tapes from church to reception hotel --  the man of my dreams was in a nightmare state.  It would be over a decade before he again tasted of �Aztl�n Stupid-Juice� (AKA tequila).

I needed help from a relatively un-hungover male, and thus drafted my trusty friend Art Coppola.

Art had also bachelor-partied.  Haggard-faced, he answered his door whining, �I sure hope Steve�s not dead.  If he is, it is all Mike�s fault!�

Mike is Steve�s brother, and while I believed my ragamuffin pal�s version of the story, and thus his shirking responsibility for the condition of my now-barfing groom, Art still was forced to cowboy up and run me all over town.

As we drove towards Gate�s Pass to pick up the sound system, we tuned in the car radio to nascent community radio station, KXCI.  In the midst of any number of good rocking tunes came something that grabbed me by the lapel from its first Telecaster-driven lick.

A smoky baritone crooned:

 

�She�s waiting for me, when I come home from work, but things just ain�t the same.

She turns out the light and cries in the dark/Won�t answer when I call her name.

On the stairs I smoke a cigarette alone/The Mexican kids are shooting fireworks below.

Hey baby, it�s the Fourth of July ��

 

�Art?� I demanded of my cowed chauffeur, �Who the hell is this singing?�

�I don�t know,� he admitted, the fear gelling in his partied-out eyes. �Look, it�s not my fault Steve�s hungover, I � �

�Screw that! Get me this song!  Now! �

�But � y-you don�t even know who it is.�

�Details, details!  This is the missing song from my reception tapes!�

�But ��

Art shut up when I shot him through with a wild-eyed bridal stiletto stare.

As there were no cell-phones in those primitive times to help us inquire as to the title, we had to wait in the hot car outside the church, praying the host would back-announce the song.

Host came through. Damned if it wasn�t Dave Alvin, with his song �Fourth of July,� from his brand-new album, �Romeo�s Escape.� 

I�ll state right here I had loved Dave�s work since I was barely legal, grooving to his music made with The Blasters, the seminal band he formed in youth with his brother Phil.  I�d first seen the Alvins right there in Tucson, Dave shredding his Fender in leather and grease, squat in his signature skinny-legged, pigeon-toed, gittin�-it stance. I�d enjoyed Dave�s Goth-punk explorations with the Flesh Eaters, and also dug his contributions to X and the Knitters, both.

Yet I was ill-prepared for how much I would love his first solo album, and this song, in particular.

Dave�s recorded �Fourth of July� with X, and on a later solo album as well, and Robert Earl Keen has also taken a stab at it.  But the version that I adore is still that perfect take from �Romeo�s Escape,� with its big kick drum and wistful pedal steel driving a tale of romantic woe.

Thus, armed with a fistful of aspirin and a canteen of cool, cool water, Art was sent searching for the album.  I�m happy to report that, two decades on, I still have �Romeo�s Escape,� the vinyl now rather worse for wear and tear.  I pull it out several times a year for my radio show. Always, of course, it is featured on my anniversary, and dedicated to my favorite (and only) husband.

I�m also happy to report that, unlike the tattered, aching couple that star in Dave�s musical drama, Steve and I have never forgotten the Fourth of July.  I still never turn a cheek when he reaches for my lips.

And he has kept true to his word that I see those fireworks every year on our anniversary.

Author: Gregg Geil