I'm working through some 9,000 albums in my house from A to Z. Here's a more detailed introduction.

All Smiles
Ten Readings of a Warning
Released: 2007
Acquired: 2007 from the label

Oh for the Getting and Not Letting Go
Released: 2009
Acquired: 2009 from the artist

Being on the up and up, I’ll state at the outset that these two recordings were made by a guy who over the past few years became a good friend. All Smiles is Jim Fairchild, who I saw a zillion times playing guitar and keys with Grandaddy, the pride of Modesto, Calif. At the old job work often occurred in the following scenario: music person and music writer person meet in bar, talk about songs, drink beer. It turns out Jim and I share an affinity for beer. And grilling.

Anyway, the plug got pulled on poor old Grandaddy and Jim played for a while in Earlimart with a mutual friend. And he started recording songs under the name All Smiles. He also regularly gets called into duty with Modest Mouse. Jim is the only friend of mine who has been called “my friend” by Johnny Marr in a Pitchfork interview. That makes me and Marr practically family. Well, not really.

Smiling on the inside.

So perhaps I’m a little close to call this one, but Jim’s albums are worthy of your time and he’s generous with the amount of music placed on his Web site for sampling. Ten Readings is wonderfully intricate with little instrumental parts that catch your attention on the nth listen. The sound isn’t overly forceful. It’s like having somebody whisper something pretty to you in French. Oh for the Getting puts the guitars further in the front without sacrificing the intriguing ways he makes the songs unfold.

Davie Allan & the Arrows
Devil’s Rumble: Anthology ’64-‘68
Released: 2004
Acquired: 2008, Sig’s Lagoon

Moving Right Along
Released: 2008
Acquired: 2008 from the artist

I have to credit our Continental Club for getting me on board with this skull-crunching guitar monster from the ‘60s. What Dick Dale’s music was to surf culture, Allan’s was for biker culture, the soundtrack of choice for B-movie films about guys and motorcycles. As Allan told me, “I went for lots of low notes a la Duane Eddy, my first guitar idol. But I added the distortion and imagined what a motorcycle might sound like if it was a musical instrument.” Shortly after we talked he finished Moving Right Along, which found him playing with the same fire and flair that he did 40 years earlier. If you dig old-school instrumental guitar rock, his anthology is essential, like rubbing a finger-full of ground up NoDoz on your gums, not that I’ve ever done that before a big calculus exam. And if you buy into the guitar-as-extension-of-one’s-dick theory, the photo below suggests Davie Allan is a four-legged monster.

"This machine kills everything that fucks with it."

Gary Allan
Alright Guy
Released: 2001
Acquired: 2001 from a friend

Tough All Over
Released: 2005
Acquired: 2005 from the record label

Greatest Hits
Released: 2007
Acquired: 2007 from the record label

The first time I saw Gary Allan was at one of Willie Nelson’s picnics in Selma (I think) back in 2001. If memory serves it was Augustish and the temperature ranged from 172 degrees during the afternoon to 119 degrees when the sun went down. And if memory serves, Allan walked out in a dapper western suit and hat and played his set. While I sat there quaffing one glass of water per cup of beer I realized Gary Allan’s not a sissy.

The suit blocks harmful UV rays and is impervious to heat.

My buddy Richard had talked up Allan’s Smoke Rings in the Dark but I was broke at the time and never found a cheap copy. He passed along Alright Guy, which I appreciated because I liked Todd Snider a lot. A few years later Songs About Rain popped up a bunch on the radio during a road trip, so I have great affinity for that tune.

And speaking of him not being a sissy, Tough All Over is the album Allan made after his wife killed herself. It’s full of hurt and defiance, love and anger. And in perhaps the most punk-rock thing that was done during the ‘00s, Allan took Best I Ever Had, a flaccid bit of blubbery music material by Vertical Horizon, and turned it into a cathartic anthem for the departed. Unlike Allan, I am a big fat sissy, and his reading of the opening line “so you sailed away into a gray sky morning” puts a lump in my throat.

Here’s where things get tricky. As a Bakersfield guy, there’s a certain distinguished California country tradition that Allan’s a part of. And he’s not the first to thread some pop and rock into what he does. Buck Owens knew his way around pop. But like Anakin Skywalker, the wrong side of the Force seems to be winning. I certainly don’t begrudge a guy making a living, and ditching the suits and the Stetson has done wonders for Allan’s crossover appeal. But Living Hard was lacking some of the rootsy sounding stuff like I Just Got Back From Hell from its predecessor. He has a new one coming called Get Off on the Pain; its title doesn’t instill me with a lot of hope.

Read more installments of this series here.