Tag: Reno Nevada

Back a few years ago, I got into The Blasters. Since then, I’ve followed their guitar player, Dave Alvin,  into different bands and soloed all over the map. I never say this phrase much, but Dave Alvin is a true American treasure. I’ve heard the man play roots rockabilly, old country, punk, rock and roll, hard rock, and psychedelic/jazz type of music as The Third Mind. It’s nothing that this man can’t do on guitar. 

The Third Mind is a band co-founded by Dave Alvin and bassist Victor Krummenacher (of Camper Van Beethoven) with the idea of creating spontaneous, live-in-the-studio music without rehearsals. The concept is inspired by the free-form recording techniques of artists like Miles Davis, where musicians simply pick a key, start playing, and let the performance evolve organically.

They took this folk song by Richard Farina and gave it some bite with Alvin’s guitar. It’s a folk song stretched into something wider, keeping the original intact. I have also heard them cover Dark Star and Morning Dew (a song originally written and recorded by Canadian Folk singer Bonnie Dobson)by the Grateful Dead. Reno, Nevada, is on the 2025 album Right Now!. This song feels like a drive through the desert at night.

Dave Alvin: I had a crazy idea and was looking for musicians who perhaps didn’t think it was so insane. Many years ago I’d been reading John Szwed’s excellent biography of Miles Davis, “So What”, and was fascinated by his thorough descriptions of how Mr. Davis and his producer, Teo Macero, created some of his classic electric albums like Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson. Basically, Miles would gather great musicians in a studio, pick a key and a groove and then record everything live over several days. Then he and Mr. Macero would edit and shape these improvisations into compositions. Having never recorded like that, I had a fantasy to try it someday if the fates ever allowed.

One night after a gig in San Francisco, a decade or more later, I mentioned this fantasy to Victor Krummenacher. I’d known the always musically adventurous Mr. Krummenacher for a couple of decades (since he was a young buck bassist in Camper Van Beethoven) and hoped he would understand.

The Third Mind
Dave Alvin: Guitar, Vocals
David Immerglück: Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals
Michael Jerome: Drums, Percussion
Victor Krummenacher: Bass, Vocals
Featuring:
Jesse Sykes: Guitar, Vocals

Here is a full performance by The Third Mind

Reno, Nevada

It’s a long, long way down to Reno, Nevada
And a long, long way to your home
But the change in your pocket is beginning to grumble
And you reap just about what you’ve sown
You can walk down the street, pass your face in the window
You can keep on fooling around
You can work day and night, take a chance on promotion
You can fall through a hole in the ground

Now there ain’t no game like the game you been playing
When you got a little something to lose
And there ain’t no time like the time you been wasting
And you waste just about what you choose
There’s a man at the table and you know he’s been able
To return all the odds that you lay
But you can’t feed your hunger and you ain’t getting younger
And your tongue ain’t got nothing to say

It’s a long, long way down to Reno, Nevada
And a long, long way to your home
But the ground underneath you is beginning to tremble
And the sky up above you has grown
There’s a time to be moving and a time to be grooving
And a time just for climbing the wall
But the odds have been doubled, and it ain’t worth the trouble
And you’re never going nowhere at all