For veteran musician Dave Alvin, his latest project The Third Mind was a seemingly manifested collective of musicians he had kept tabs on in the hopes of one day making music together.

The story of how The Third Mind came to be is fitting for the band's psychedelic rock base and array of sounds that show off how they are all tapped into one another and possibly a higher force.

“You just know everybody, and you know enough of their personalities to know that they'd be into doing something like this because a lot of musicians aren’t,” says Alvin describing how he and his bandmates got together without really knowing what they were going to play.

The Third Mind will perform at The Heights Theater on Thursday, February 29 a perfectly cosmic day for an otherworldly band.

The Third Mind is made up of Alvin along with Victor Krummenacher on bass, Michael Jerome on drums, the incomparable Jesse Sykes on vocals and guest guitarist Mark Karan for this tour filling in for David Immerglück.

All band members are seasoned in their own right with a wide range of backgrounds from Jerome keeping time with Charlie Musselwhite, Immerglück laying it down with John Hiatt, Krummenacher founding Camper Van Beethoven, Sykes leading her own band Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter and Karan perfectly fitting in with his experience with the Grateful Dead and RatDog.

Three years after their 2020 self-titled release, the band played their first gig in a big way at San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival where Alvin describes realizing that this wild project could really work and transcend the studio.

“The amazing thing about the touring is it showed me just what a unique magical little group of people this is. I started out playing with guys that I grew up with, so I know what that magic is, that’s a really difficult magic to recreate. With the various bands I've put together over the years that's always been the thing, you have to hire someone that's going to bring the magic and the love, hopefully not the fistfights and the yelling.”

“The amazing thing about the touring is it showed me just what a unique magical little group of people this is."

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In his long career Alvin has had many projects beginning with The Blasters alongside his brother Phil Alvin, playing with fellow California roots rockers X, The Knitters, The Flesh Eaters, The Pleasure Barons, his backing band The Guilty Ones and in the last few years collaborating with Texas Flatlander Jimmy Dale Gilmore.


For Alvin, having fans follow him along in his career path is a real blessing and not one that he takes lightly.  He knows there are some who scoff at him playing acoustic guitar or switching his sound up in any way as they only want to hear him sing “Marie, Marie” but to those fans he assures them, he will continue singing that song as well and The Third Mind does not subtract from his other projects.

“I’ve been really lucky that enough people have stuck around for all the twists and turns,” says Alvin. No matter who Alvin is playing with, his distinctive guitar style comes through leaving no mistaking his stamp on the music but in The Third Mind, though his style still rings through, the entire project feels distinct.

“That's part of the fun for me,” says Alvin. “I’m a pretty primitive rock and roll, blues guitar player. I am Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson. I am Lightnin’ Hopkins. Those are the guys I grew up idolizing and that's who I play like.”

Growing up in California, Alvin and his brother would hunt out the blues players, sneak in to watch them play and then head home to practice making Alvin’s guitar style authentically rooted in the blues and adding a nice twist to the psychedelic rock sounds of The Third Mind.

The California Texas connection between the blues and psychedelic rock is a strong bond and it is fitting that Alvin continues to explore this wide array of influences between two far away states.

"Music transcends all that, says Alvin of the surface level differences between California and Texas while noting the similarities between the two states leading both to have similar musical histories.

"I try to describe it to people as, Houston at one time was the Southern most reach of the blues world, it was the Western most reach of the cajun world and it was where country, cajun, blues, R&B and Norteño  all came together and in a weird way, when I was a kid growing up in California it was like that there."

Alvin still remembers the giddy feeling he got when he first came to Houston just knowing it was the home of his hero Lightnin' Hopkins and where George Jones recorded his first album, a feeling of joy he continues to experience when he comes to town and a reflection of the influences in his playing.

“My career goal is to place my guitar style into as many different contexts as makes sense whatever feels natural and that's what The Third Mind is. Yes, I’m playing some stuff differently than people would expect but on the other hand, no I’m not.”

On the band's latest release, the sonic center of each song is Sykes's amazing voice which is an instrument in and of itself as she takes not only the listener to a higher plane, but the whole band.

Alvin describes the intention behind placing her front and center in order to further create a new sound and not “another Dave Alvin band” as well as adding to the element of spontaneity and improvisation during their live shows.

“Normally, you lock in with the drummer or you lock in with the drummer and bass player but in this situation, you lock in with everybody. Jesse has such a unique way of phrasing songs, and she doesn't phrase them the same way every time, so you have to be ready to follow wherever she is going to take you,” describes Alvin.

Each band member finds their way to the musical destination. “When we’re done playing, I’m exhausted in a different way than I've ever been exhausted before,” he says.
The Third Mind takes twists and turns in all of their songs, from richly orchestrated originals like “Tall Grass” to the spooky and trippy cover of “Sally Go Round The Roses” leaving the listener in a state of awe and zoned out bliss when the journey of the track is over.
The music of The Third Mind reflects a time in musical history where bands would improvise and take mental trips together along with their fans but The Third Mind is not a jam band as even though they improvise, they clearly all maintain respect for the construction of the songs.

“I think a big difference between us and a jam band is a lot of jam bands, rightfully so, they're about the lick. In The Third Mind, everybody has worked with songwriters, everybody understands. I’m a songwriter, that's what I'm good at so everybody understands structure of song and how to support a song as opposed to playing just licks and that really is what is kind of magical,” agrees Alvin.

The Third Mind will perform on Thursday, February 29 at The Heights Theater, 339 W 19th.  Doors at 7 p.m, tickets $28-496.