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Dave Alvin, a respected member of the roots rock and Americana community, showed off a different side of his creative imagination with the Third Mind, a studio-based project whose music was a spontaneous mix of rock, blues, psychedelia, jazz, and improvisational music. The project made its debut with 2020's The Third Mind, an album that came from Alvin's desire to experiment with unusual methods of performing and recording music, creating a set that was challenging, exciting, and languid all at once.
The germ of the Third Mind was planted in Dave Alvin's mind while reading So What, a biography of Miles Davis written by John Szwed. In the book, Szwed described Davis' working methods for some of his pioneering fusion recordings of the 1970s. Davis would pick a key and a tempo, and then he and his accompanists would perform extemporaneously until they felt they had reached a good stopping point. After the sessions were over, Davis and his producer Teo Macero would use editing to shape the jams into their final form for albums like Bitches Brew, A Tribute to Jack Johnson, and On the Corner.
Eager to try something similar, Alvin brought together a group of musicians he thought would be right for an improvisational project. Along with Alvin on guitar and vocals, the sessions included David Immerglück (Counting Crows, Cracker, Monks of Doom) on guitar and keyboards, Victor Krummenacher (Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker) on bass, Michael Jerome (John Cale, Richard Thompson, Better than Ezra) on drums, and Jesse Sykes on guitar and vocals, with guest appearances from D.J. Bonebrake of X on vibraphone and Jack Rudy, whose credits range from Johnny Rivers to Margaret Cho, on harmonica. Without rehearsal, the musicians recorded covers of songs by Alice Coltrane, Fred Neil, Tim Rose, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and the 13th Floor Elevators, as well as one original created by the group, with improvisational interplay embraced throughout. In February 2020, their first album, The Third Mind, was released by Yep Roc Records, and the following April, the group took their experiment out of the studio and onto the stage with a West Coast concert tour.
© Mark Deming /TiVo