Bittersweet coda to folk showcase

Dave Alvin’s annual January concert has become the keynote event of the Acoustic Music Series in Pasadena. But early during his 10th edition Saturday at the Neighborhood Church, the contemporary-folk stalwart voiced the concern that was on the minds of many regulars at the series, which began in 1992 and quickly became a small jewel on the local music landscape.

“This might be the last one,” Alvin told the capacity crowd of about 300, and he characterized the evening as “bittersweet.” The reason for the uncertainty was the death in November of series founder Ron Stockfleth, a crusty contractor, artisan and music fan who started putting on shows in the Pasadena area despite a complete lack of experience in the field. His death of kidney cancer at age 55 has imperiled something that’s grown into more than just a place to hear music.

“This was a nice community gathering spot, and for this type of music, community is the word,” Alvin said in his dressing room before the show. “If it stops with Ron’s passing, it’s a real sad thing.”

Roger Sherman, the series’ sound engineer and a close associate of Stockfleth, said the future of the nonprofit enterprise is up in the air.

“It was pretty much Ron’s ballgame in terms of promoting and stuff,” Sherman said Saturday. “He never ran after the sponsors or benefactors. If we get some interest in that area, it would make things a lot more possible.... We’d love to have it happen. It would be a shame if it went away.”

A lot of musicians would agree.

“The audience that’s coming out to these shows is kind of who you want to play for,” said Rick Shea, a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has played the series both as a solo act and as a member of Alvin’s band.

“Their musical tastes have developed. They’ve kind of worked at it a little bit,” Shea added Saturday, just after performing at an afternoon memorial service for Stockfleth at the Unitarian church. “It’s the audience that knows how to find this music.”

“It’s a really special show,” said Rob Waller, the singer in the band I See Hawks in L.A., which also played at the memorial. “Doing this kind of music and being able to get in front of a roomful of a couple hundred people in a really nice space and having everyone listen, that’s a really special thing.”

That audience has been drawn by such artists as Alison Krauss, Mark O’Connor, Susana Baca, Holly Near, Iris DeMent and countless others -- virtually every major figure working the U.S. folk circuit. The series’ primary venue has been the Neighborhood Church, a spacious, comfortable room with an intimate feel and fine sound.

At the afternoon memorial, friends and associates of Stockfleth expressed their affection for the Pasadena native, but they made no effort to sugarcoat a man who was described variously as “difficult,” “a curmudgeon,” “sarcastic” and “solitary.”

Those aren’t qualities you tend to associate with a successful concert promoter, but over the years, the Los Angeles area has had no shortage of eccentric characters at the helms of its folk-music institutions. In the early ‘60s, the flamboyant Doug Weston built the Troubadour in West Hollywood into a premiere showcase, while a couple of miles away, the headstrong Ed Pearl made the Ash Grove a bastion of a more rootsy form of folk.

So it was fitting that one of the songs Alvin dedicated to Stockfleth during his show was “Ashgrove,” a salute to the Melrose Avenue club and the way of life it opened up for the blues-struck kid from Downey.

“You have to have somebody with a vision, and Ron was kind of like Brendan Mullen or Ed Pearl,” Alvin said before the show, citing the founder of the Hollywood punk club the Masque and the Ash Grove owner, respectively. “Like most visionaries ... they’re all idiosyncratic, and they’ve all got their edges. ... But he was a guy who did it for love, and we don’t have enough of that in this town.”

Whether it was a swan song or not, Alvin’s show embodied the appeal of the Acoustic Music Series. The concert always gives him a rare and welcome chance to play with steel, slide and conventional guitarist Greg Leisz, and on Saturday they were joined by singer-guitarist-accordionist Chris Gaffney and singer-violinist Amy Farris.

Alvin, who established himself as a top-rank songwriter and intense musician during his days with the Los Angeles bands the Blasters and X, went from deep-voiced blues to sultry stomps to evocative storytelling, with the audience hanging on every word and pristinely clear musical accent.

Although it was “Ashgrove” and “Somewhere in Time,” another song from his latest album, that Alvin dedicated to Stockfleth’s memory, it was another selection that might have made the most poetic connection with the reticent, recalcitrant loner who provided a stage for so many musical poets.

Alvin’s “Everett Ruess” tells the true story of a young Los Angeles artist who also had a penchant for retreating to the Sierra Nevada and who in the 1930s disappeared without a trace in the Western wilderness. The final verse:

You give your dreams away as you get older

Oh, but I never gave up mine

And they’ll never find my body, boys

Or understand my mind.