The net result for the recording of West is compilation of songs by writers "shaped by California’s mix of cultures, beliefs, and attitudes, as well as by the oaks and redwoods, the cities and farmlands, the highways and barrooms, the ocean, mountains and deserts and the eternal hopes and disappointments of growing up in a mythical promised land.”
But it doesn’t stop there. One of the benefits of modern-day liner notes is that, in an effort to fully communicate from the heart as well as with cold hard facts, they so often come in the form of personal ruminations from the artist. Alvin writes with passion and inspiration about the road taken to get him to the recording of West of the West, but he also acknowledges the evolved and ever-developing nature of society and, by extension, music.
“The landscape,” Alvin notes, “that shaped these songwriters have vanished or changed drastically.” But whatever the outcome in forms or genres, he is optimistic about the range of possibilities that stem from such variegated potential:
- Right now, whether on a guitar or with a computer, on a cattle ranch near Alturus or in a garage in Orange County, in a shack in the Mendocino woods or a one room Hollywood apartment, or sitting somewhere at a kitchen table, somebody is writing the next generation of songs with California bloodlines.
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