Limited Time
Pre-order until May 24, 2019!
For a limited time, Yep Roc Records is offering its customers the opportunity to purchase the 25th Anniversary Edition of Dave Alvin, King of California. Craft Records has agreed to allow us to sell these through our website for a limited time. The album, originally released on Hightone Records, has been remastered and includes four bonus tracks and is available for the first time on vinyl!
Recorded in Los Angeles the day after the historic 1994 Northridge earthquake and produced by Greg Leisz, King of California had its genesis in the album’s title track, a readymade folk ballad, written for his mother, in which an aspiring suitor heads west to make his fortune in the wild, still-young Golden State. “King of California is when I decided ‘this is when I let the song tell me what it sounds like,’” says Alvin. “Ever since then, that’s been my rule. It sounds ridiculous, but it was something I had to learn.”
The expanded edition includes a previously unreleased track from the recording sessions, “Riverbed Rag,” an instrumental designed for a guitar-dobro duel by Alvin and Leisz, and inspired by the usually dry San Gabriel River that both musicians grew up exploring. Two additional covers, Merle Haggard’s “Kern River,” originally recorded for the 1994 Haggard tribute album Tulare Dust (co-produced by Alvin and Tom Russell), and Katy Moffatt’s “The Cuckoo,” from her 1999 Alvin-produced album Loose Diamond, round out the bonus tracks.
