X marks another side trip to roots music

How many musicians would cite a picnic as one of the most cherished memories of their professional life?

That’s what you get with the Knitters. Life in the group -- a sporadic ensemble of X members Exene Cervenka, John Doe and D.J. Bonebrake and former Blasters guitarist Dave Alvin and roots-rock bassist Jonny Ray Bartel -- is just a different pace than the norm.

“We were playing down toward San Diego and Dave said, ‘There’s a mission here, have you seen it?’ ” Cervenka reminisces, warmly, of a side trip the band took on tour in the mid-’90s. “We drove to it and had a picnic and didn’t show up at the club until 9 or 10 and they said, ‘Why weren’t you here for sound check?’ ”

Alvin chuckles when told that Cervenka singled that out among her favorite recollections.

“Was that the day I took everybody the long way to San Juan Capistrano?” he asks. “I remember that. My name in the group is ‘Long Way Alvin.’ Gosh, she remembers that? What a trip.”

The thing about the Knitters is that it’s all a side trip. Ever since the ensemble came together in the early ‘80s to play old country and rockabilly songs at benefit concerts, the Knitters has served as a safe harbor for its members, a setting in which to cast off the usual concerns and pressures of their primary pursuits.

Even the time Doe didn’t show up at all -- he was stuck in Los Angeles, where he had a job acting on a TV show -- stands out as a highlight for the band.

“We were playing weird little clubs in the Central Valley and he was flying out in the morning, filming and then flying back in the evening,” Cervenka says. “One night he didn’t show. I sang his songs. Had to change keys, ask [the other members] what we wanted to do now -- all in front of the audience.

“The thing is, in a band like this, if a string breaks, it’s an opportunity to have some fun. If an amp goes out, Dave can just clap his hands in time. It doesn’t faze you.”

The Knitters mix the familiar with the obscure (tossing in a few of their own songs, adapted to the style). Their balance of affection and irreverence was captured on a 1985 album, “Poor Little Critter on the Road.” Now and then, they’ve reconvened for a West Coast show, but for the most part the X-ers have concentrated on their main band (X just played the Orange County Fair) and other solo pursuits, while Alvin has focused on his solo career and production jobs.

Now, though, they have reactivated the Knitters, with a long-coming follow-up album, “The Modern Sounds of the Knitters” (released July 12), and plans for a national tour (a first for the band), including stops Sept. 2 at the El Rey Theatre and Sept. 3 at House of Blues Anaheim.

Doe, interviewed in tandem with Alvin, says he can’t think of a better way to spend his summer. “Any time you take yourselves less seriously, and especially onstage, anything can happen, and it’s OK,” he says. “Anything can screw up and it doesn’t matter. It’s all just for the hell of it anyway -- not in a you-don’t-care-about-it way, but you can just roll with it.”

But there is a musical element to the group as well. By the time the band did its first album, Alvin had long drawn on country and rockabilly with the Blasters, while X’s music was increasingly showing Americana roots influences. It was a natural step to tackle Merle Haggard’s “Silver Wing” or to countrify X’s “The New World.”

At that time, however, there wasn’t even a term for that type of music, let alone the whole “Americana” alt-country genre that exists today. This was also years before the success of the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack and the reissue of various archival recordings, which helped spur consciousness of country music’s early history and fuel a whole movement.

Today, it’s easy to see the Knitters as part of the vanguard. Their debut album even inspired a 1999 tribute collection, “Poor Little Knitters on the Road,” from Chicago’s alt-roots Bloodshot Records and featuring such devoted artists as Ryan Adams’ band Whiskeytown and the Old 97’s.

“When we did gigs 20 years ago, a lot of people hadn’t had a positive experience with roots music,” says Alvin. “So we were saying that you don’t have to take it seriously. But when the tribute album came out, I was stunned that it had been that influential. It had been done on a lark.”

The new album wasn’t much less of a lark. It was recorded in a three-day session, with the five musicians playing live in the studio and with very few overdubs, and picks up where the debut left off 20 years ago. The Stanley Brothers’ “Rank Stranger” and Jimmy Driftwood’s haunting “Long Chain On” get the treatment, as do X’s “Burning House of Love” and Alvin’s “Dry River,” all with a nice balance of earnestness and irreverence, wrapped up with a closing romp through Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild.”

But does the new one stand out as much as the first one did in its more innocent time?

“People are more informed,” Doe says. “But I think that what we have that maybe other groups don’t is the vaudeville sense of humor. I don’t think Uncle Tupelo was a laugh riot.”

Doe, Alvin and Cervenka all seem well set to make sure there are plenty of laughs still to come, and they expect there will be more tours and albums in the future -- Doe jokes that the next album is already scheduled for a 2025 release.

Alvin will take it whenever it comes.

“That’s always the case for the Knitters -- ‘That was fun, let’s do it again,’ ” he says. “For me, doing this is a nice way of sort of having a vacation from myself.”