Fourth of July

Dave Alvin's enduring anthem — originally recorded by X — deserves to be played every year

Dave Alvin cutting loose on “Fourth of July” in 2018.

The first time I heard “Fourth of July” was in a sweaty Houston club in July 1986 on a rare night off from the Texas City Sun. A parttime college student at the time, I was 21 and gravitating toward the bands played on KTRU, the Rice University station that my friend Brian had turned me onto.

KTRU, with the nickname “F-word Radio,” was playing the alternative, underground, and punk artists that you didn’t hear on the city’s commercial stations. Located at 91.7 FM — left of the dial, as they say — the music on the 650-watt station could be heard clearly only inside Loop 610.

The station was responsible for broadening my artistic palette as my politics turned more liberal, thanks largely to my Sun co-workers and the Red Scare elements of the AIDS crisis. Soon, I started haunting record stores, searching for cassettes to play on my 80-mile roundtrip commute between Houston and Texas City.

Brian, who by this point was setting agate and proofing box scores on the sports desk at the Houston Post, mentioned that X was playing on July 3 at Fitzgerald’s. He had to work that night, but I didn’t, so he gave me his ticket.

“You should go,” he said. “They’re not as good without Zoom in the band, but it should be fun.”

Zoom was Billy Zoom, the wild man guitarist for the Los Angeles-based group, which had released four acclaimed albums between 1980 and 1983. He had left the group after X’s outlier effort at major level success (1985’s “Ain’t Love Grand,” which wasn’t) sold poorly. Unlike X’s first four records, the album’s AOR, hair metal production sounded dated as soon as it was released.

X replaced Zoom with not one, but two guitarists — Tony Gilkyson and Dave Alvin — and forged on. Gilkyson had just left Lone Justice, another influential band that imploded under major label pressure, and stayed in the role until Zoom rejoined in 1998.

Alvin had left his group The Blasters — where he was the principal songwriter — due to ongoing battles with his brother Phil, the lead singer. He had been part of the X-offshoot The Knitters, which had released a (mostly) old-time country record the same year as “Ain’t Love Grand,” and worked with Doe in other groups as well.

At the time, Alvin was working as a “hired sideman” for X. He wrote only one song for the group before starting his own solo career the next year.

The song was “Fourth of July.”

Life at Fitzgerald’s

Fitzgerald’s, along with Rockefeller’s, was one of Houston’s best music venues in the late 1970s and 80s. Built in 1918, the two-story club was located in the Greater Heights district, where it served as a Polish center and dance hall for more than 50 years.

The club became known for hosting many of the bands I was getting into, and I spent many a memorable evening in my 20s in the top-floor club or at the smaller bottom stage known as Zelda’s. Fitzgerald’s hosted my second favorite concert — The Pleasure Barons, an early 1990s “all-star revue” that included Alvin, Doe, Country Dick Montana, and Mojo Nixon, among others.

On this night, the new X lineup was playing the club in preparation for a much larger performance — the second Farm Aid show in Manor, Texas, just outside Austin, where they would play “Fourth of July” as part of a three-song set for a VH-1 audience.

I loved the song then — although it was something of an outlier (a good one this time) in X’s catalog — primarily because of Doe’s lead vocal. (I’ve always thought his vocals were underrated.) But, more important, It cemented my appreciation for Alvin’s vivid yet austere songwriting.

She's waiting for me when I get home from work
But things just ain't the same
She turns out the light and cries in the dark
Won't answer when I call her name

(chorus)
On the stairs I smoke a cigarette alone
The Mexican kids are shooting fireworks below
Hey, baby, it's the Fourth of July
Hey, baby, it's the Fourth of July

She gives me her cheek when I want her lips
And I don't have the strength to go
On the lost side of town in a dark apartment
We gave up trying so long ago

Whatever happened, I apologize
So dry your tears and baby, walk outside
It's the Fourth of July

In 2022, I interviewed Alvin about the publication of New Highway, a collection of lyrics, poems, eulogies, and short stories written during his four-plus decades in music. The book included the lyrics to almost 50 of his songs, one of which was the original, much longer poem that became “Fourth of July.” I mentioned at the time that the finished song was “an exercise in editing.”

Conversations: Dave Alvin, Part 1

“I am not the most prolific songwriter, but I am a massive editor,” Alvin said. “When I write a song, I go through it as if I had 17 editors in my head. Get rid of that. Don't even get rid of that, get rid of that other line. Sometimes songs just flow. They just come out of you and other times you got to squeeze them out, you got to edit them out.

“There are times when I will drop that and just let the song blabber on. Sometimes that works, but in general, I am a massive editor. I will write a song and then four years later still be editing it and I will still be editing it even after it's recorded and released.”

I saw X perform the song live only once more at a 1988 show at Fitzgerald’s, touring behind “See How We Are.” Today, the band — which has all of its original members — does not play songs live that Zoom was not involved in, although Doe performs it solo or with co-lead Exene Cervenka.

But I’ve heard Alvin play “Fourth of July” more than 40 times live, having seen him more than any other person. And every year, on this day, I make sure to play it as loud as I can.