E-Mail This Article to a Friend Homeward bound As always, Dave Alvin heads back to his roots BY TED DROZDOWSKI

Dave Alvin’s got plenty of trademarks. The songwriter and guitarist who helped lead the Blasters into rock-and-roll history has an unmistakable voice full of wagon train dust and campfire soul. With a few subtle details and spare lines of dialogue, his lyrics can cut to the core of humanity’s most frail or dignified inner spaces. And his playing is an encyclopædia of early rock and blues, kept vital by his own tone and his unflagging energy.

Then there’s the bandanna. Alvin rarely appears in public without one tied around his neck. For some performers, those brightly colored pieces of cloth might seem a working man’s affectation, but for Alvin, who’s 48, they’re as much a reminder that he’s a blue-collar guy as is the steady stream of music that’s come from his pen and his strings for more than 25 years.

Lately, it seems he’s been putting in overtime. Alvin, who plays the Paradise with his band the Guilty Men on a bill with instrumental rockers Los Straitjackets this Friday, recently released what may be his finest solo recording, Ash Grove (Yep Roc), and followed that with a live Blasters reunion album and DVD, both titled Going Home (Shout!). The Blasters discs are rocking flash fires that reach far back into the Southern California band’s history with vintage performance footage and an August 2003 reunion show featuring blues harmonica master Billy Boy Arnold, rockabilly guitarist Sonny Burgess, and West Coast doo-woppers the Calvanes and the Medallions as guests. Alvin is especially good, firing off precise, greasy riffs as the words he penned for durable Blasters numbers like the love song "Marie Marie," the paean to musical freedom "Border Radio," and the group’s banner "American Music" fly from his brother Phil’s big, catfish mouth.

Then there’s Ash Grove, the follow-up to Alvin’s 2000 collection of vintage murder ballads, blues, sea chanteys, and cowboy songs called Public Domain (Hightone), which won a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album. Like the recent work of many socially attuned songwriters, it reflects America’s post–September 11 climate, but Alvin has a knack for finding light in dark corners. And he keeps things personal, not polemic. Even in "Out of Control," where every minute may be the last for a junkie couple living by prostitution and the gun, the night sky with its shooting stars and vast open beauty provides escape from an ugly life and protection for their love. The most affecting song may be the biographical title track, where Alvin travels back to the Ash Grove, the club in Downey, California, that he sneaked into as a kid to see old bluesmen like Lightnin’ Hopkins and Gary Davis. When he flashes to the present, "Full of everyday people tryin’ to get ahead/Tryin’ to find a reason just to get out of bed," he finds the inspiration to go on in those old Ash Grove memories.

Especially his memories of what he saw on the long-gone club’s stage. "For me, everything else you do — making albums, writing songs — is just to give you a reason to play live," he says from a tour stop in Lexington, Kentucky. "Live performance is what I like. For that hour and a half to two hours you’re on stage, you’re immortal. You’re not living in the past or future. You’re entirely in the present, but the past and future are all around you. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it’s addicting."

Alvin, whose family surname is Czyzewski, believes he inherited his work ethic and his initial interest in music from his father. "My dad played violin, and we had everything from polka records to union songs to Lawrence Welk. When Dad would have a little too much to drink, he might sing the Wobblies songbook at the dinner table. The next night, it might be old vaudeville songs."

Alvin’s father died recently, and though he seemed to have some issues with his son’s choosing a musician’s life, Alvin admits, "we came to a pretty good place with it. He’d ask, ‘Are you paying the bills?’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah,’ and it was okay. That’s a reflection of the world he grew up in. People my father’s age, say in Youngstown, Ohio, would get a job in a steel mill and work there their whole lives. That doesn’t exist anymore. There’s no stability for blue-collar or white-collar workers. There’s always tended to be instability in the musician’s life. You’re doing okay today, but will the gigs pay the rent next month? Now, everybody’s in the same boat. It’s part of the culture of fear we live in now — with the fear that the future is bringing more pains in the ass being a major one. For me, today I just feel lucky and very fortunate for having been able to do what I love for 20 some years."

Dave Alvin and Los Straitjackets appear this Friday, July, 30, at the Paradise Rock Club, 967 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston; call (617) 562-8800.