Roots-Rock Musicians’ ‘Revival’ Is a One-Bus Tour

Putting 15 musicians on one bus for a national tour is asking for trouble, but the Hightone Records-sponsored “Roadhouse Revival Tour” is doing all right as it nears its conclusion this weekend. There’s only been one breakdown, approaching Seattle earlier this week, and no major tantrums.

“Everybody respects everybody else’s work to a lesser or greater extent,” says Dave Alvin, the roots-rock patriarch who’s headlining the package. “It’s not like somebody’s trying to play Captain & Tennille tapes at 4 in the morning. There’s a lot of, ‘Oh, you’ve got that old record? I’ve got it too.’ ”

The lineup also includes the Orange County western swing band Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys, Texas-based honky-tonk country singer Dale Watson, Nashville singer-songwriter Buddy Miller and South Carolina piano-pounder Reverend Billy C. Wirtz. (Orange County rocker Chris Gaffney will join the bill at the Alligator Lounge tonight, and the core roster wraps up the tour at the Belly Up in Solana Beach on Sunday.)

Beyond Alvin and Big Sandy it’s not a big box-office package, but the idea for the 20-city swing wasn’t to make money.

“We took the opportunity of having a new distribution deal as an excuse to put out a package of artists together and make a bigger deal out if it,” says Larry Slovin, the managing partner of Oakland-based Hightone.

The label has become a major player in the prospering “roots” region of rock, not only with the artists on the tour but also with a Merle Haggard tribute album called “Tulare Dust” and releases by the likes of Rosie Flores, James Armstrong and Tom Russell. In January, Hightone signed with a major distributor for the first time, with a deal through WEA-distributed Rhino Records.

For Alvin, 40, who began his career as the guitarist and main songwriter with the acclaimed L.A. band the Blasters and later served some time as a member of X, the success of the tour and Hightone’s rising profile are signs of the good health of roots-rock.

“I think it’s pretty much on an upswing,” he says by phone from a gas station outside Seattle, where the bus has stalled. “For the first time there’s a pretty incredible breadth of styles and approaches. . . . It’s anything from Willie Nelson to Wilco.

“And it’s pretty much a three-generational thing. It can be anything from the country-ish singer-songwriters like the older generation like Guy Clark or Townes Van Zandt, through Lucinda Williams and me, down through to Jay Farrar in Son Volt.”

What is it that allows roots music to endure and reach successive generations of listeners?

“There’s a certain magic to the three chords, or five chords,” Alvin says. “To me it’s still the same as when we started the Blasters. I still get a similar buzz hearing Jerry Butler and Curtis Mayfield or Carl Perkins or Muddy Waters as I did 20, 30 years ago.

“I don’t know why. Listening to the stuff, you can tell that even though [producers] Sam Phillips or Phil and Leonard Chess are in the background going, ‘We’re gonna make a million bucks, man,’ there’s still a primitive quality to a lot of the old rock ‘n’ roll and blues and country that is its most appealing aspect. That’s maybe what’s always remained the inspirational thing about it.”

* The Roadhouse Revival Tour plays tonight at the Alligator Lounge, 3321 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, $10 advance, $12 at door. 8:30 p.m. (310) 449-1844. Also Sunday at the Belly Up, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach, 8 p.m. $10. (619) 481-9022.