EXHIBITING STRENGTH : With ‘Museum of Heart,’ Dave Alvin Has Started a New Creative Hot Streak

“Feeling my way in the dark” is how Dave Alvin describes the years between 1986 and 1991.

That Alvin would have felt uncertainty about his direction comes as something of a surprise. As the songwriter and lead guitarist of the Blasters, the esteemed roots-rock band fronted by his elder brother, Phil, Alvin had established himself by 1985 as one of the top musical portrait artists around.

Stepping away from the Blasters in 1986, he joined X, the band led by his old L.A.-scene buddies John Doe and Exene Cervenka. But that partnership was short-lived, and in 1987 Alvin launched a solo career with the album “Romeo’s Escape.”

He was singing for the first time. He also was trying to decide whether to narrow his wide embrace of rootsy styles and concentrate on being a country artist.

Alvin’s response was to slow down his career. He played a bit with the Pleasure Barons, a motley and boozy big band led by roots-rock reprobates Mojo Nixon and Country Dick Montana. He served as tour band leader for Syd Straw. He wrote and produced rockabilly songs for the soundtrack of the John Waters film spoof “Cry-Baby.” He spent a few months in Nashville, trying to write songs geared to the commercial country market and decided he couldn’t put enough of himself into that work to be satisfied.

In 1991, having signed with HighTone Records, a small independent label that gave him the freedom to mix and match styles, Alvin emerged with the excellent album “Blue Blvd.” Having clearly found his way, he determined not to let another four years lapse between albums.

He has come through with the newly released “Museum of Heart,” another fine effort that matches the strengths of “Blue Blvd.” with telling portraits of characters trying to cope with romantic reverses and assorted other disorienting twists of fate.

Fans of the Blasters may have been heartened by reports earlier this year that Alvin would return to the band, which hasn’t put out an album since he left, for a new recording project. But Alvin said in a recent interview that the proposed reunion didn’t get past the talking stages.

Eventually, he says, he would like to rejoin his brother for an album of cover songs, but hopes that the Blasters--with the talented O.C.-reared rocker James Intveld now in the band--will put out new material without him.

Riding a creative hot streak, Alvin plans to speed up his own pace even more. The first thing on his agenda is a tour with his band--Rick Solem on keyboards, drummer Bobby Lloyd Hicks and bassist Gregory Boaz (Greg Leisz, the highly regarded steel guitarist who plays on Alvin’s records, is expected to sit in at the gig at Bogart’s on Friday, Nov. 12).

Before the year is out, Alvin plans to record an acoustic album that will include new songs, covers of outside material and remakes of three songs off “Romeo’s Escape” that he feels he failed to do justice to the first time around.

He also is excited about a projected compilation album drawn from performances in the “In Their Own Words” songwriters’ series at the Bottom Line club in New York City.

Alvin said that one of the tracks will be a version of “Andersonville,” his historical ballad about the notorious Confederate prison, with Richard Thompson accompanying him with an eerie touch on lead guitar.