'Musician's musician' Alvin Youngblood Hart brings his band Muscle Theory to Portsmouth Guildhall Studio

And blues legend Taj Mahal said of him: ‘The boy has got thunder in his hands.’

Over the course of five albums, plus numerous collaborations and appearances on soundtracks and a variety of other projects, Hart has carved himself a formidable reputation.

While often described as a blues guitarist it’s a term which doesn’t do justice to the American’s playing – his output also covers country, rock and jazz – and Alvin himself has a distinct dislike of genre labels, something he attributes to his background.

Indeed, when we speak over Zoom, Alvin is wearing a Ramones T-shirt. When The Guide notes the shirt, he says: ‘I'm from the school where real punk-rock never had to say what it was,’ he laughs, ‘Howlin’ Wolf was punk-rock, all those kinds of things we picked up on as pre-teens, especially guys like Link Wray and Dick Dale, they were all punk-rock and they were as big an influence as anything else.’

We are talking at 1pm our time, 7am his time in Mississippi. When it is mentioned that most musicians do anything they can to avoid talking to the press this early in the day, he says with a dry laugh: ‘I've been up for about three hours now – unfortunately I have farmer genes…’

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Alvin was born in Oakland, California – his parents had migrated there from Mississippi in the aftermath of the Second World War.

They returned to Mississippi, and more recently so did Alvin, to be close to his parents – both still with us, both 88.

He recalls his childhood household being full of music and he first picked up the guitar as a teen as part of ‘The Beatles guitar proliferation era where every kid had to have a guitar – like now every kid has to have an X Box or whatever it is – we all had guitars. I was a product of that time.’

And as to the music he was exposed to growing up he adds: ‘Just being in a family that comes from the state of Mississippi, it all kind of hit me at once! I got it from all sides – from my older brothers, who were into contemporary music at the time I got the Led Zeppelins and (Jimi Hendrix’s post-Experience project) Band of Gypsys and all that, then I got the traditional music side from my parents – Jimmy Reed, Elmore James and all that.’

He released his first album in 1996, Big Mama’s Door. It is a sublime, stripped-back slice of acoustic blues which got Alvin noticed. His career since then has taken a winding road.

When The Guide refers to his ‘career’, Alvin laughs: ‘The jury is still out on that – I'm still wondering if it's a career. I didn't really know until the incidents happening which lead up to your first record deal – back in those days that was still a thing you aspired to. It's not like now where everyone is independent and like: “I'm going to make a record in my closet” kind of thing. You practiced, you performed in front of people, and hopefully reached some level of proficiency, and got noticed and got a record deal. I came in on the tail-end of that whole thing.

‘I guess around about that time when I made the deal I thought: “Well I guess this is it then, this is a career!” And I'm still here nearly 30 years later, so...’

As to the debut album’s sound, he says: ‘That was at the height of the “unplugged” thing,’ the MTV-led phenomenon of artists producing acoustic versions of their material, ‘it was my angle on unplugged, and that's what it came out as.’

Already in his thirties by the time his debut was released, he agrees he was already relatively ‘long in the tooth’ for a new artist.

‘I was thinking about this the other day – all of the other things I had to do employment-wise, just to get up to that kind level – I was in the military for seven years before I decided to try and make a go of music.’

Alvin served in the US Coast Guard – rather different to its UK namesake, the US version is a branch of the armed forces ‘responsible for maritime safety and security.’ It was during his time in the Coast Guard that he trained as an electronics technician – another string to his bow which has seen other musicians dub him The Garage Guerrilla or The Rock’n’roll MacGyver for his ability to fix things on the road.

This aspect has also become an integral part of Alvin The Musician.

‘I've been working on valve amplifiers and things like that for 30 years as well. That's a thing, that's part of the art, part of the painting, to bring that into it as well.

‘I just kind of collect things. For a long time here in America, Marshalls were out of fashion so they were easily obtained for a good minute there in the ’80s and ’90s, but now the prices have gone through the roof. So I managed to get quite a fleet of Marshall amps and I'd buy people's old broken Fender amps – I pretty much keep my own amps going.’

So does he build his own guitars too?

‘I've thrown a few Frankenstein things together,’ he chuckles. ‘The kids from my generation were very hung up on Van Halen, and his contribution to the guitar world. While I never got so much into the “widdly, widdly, widdly”, he was a great influence on me as far as the hardware side of things goes – if you don't like the guitar they sell, take it and make it into your own thing – that nuts and bolts side of it.’

When on the road, Alvin’s backing band are called Muscle Theory – but there are two versions, one based in America and one for this side of the Atlantic.

‘The Euro unit I've been playing with for over a dozen years now. It's two guys from Italy who I met on Myspace! We became great friends, we're around the same age, we grew up on the same stuff, so it's pretty much like playing music with your mates from school.’

How does he manage to rehearse with the European band ahead of tours? ‘Sometimes we do take a few days and get a good rehearsal in beforehand. Other times we'll just kind of go for it and so what we remember! It's funny because it's a double-edged sword. There was a time when we always took the time to rehearse for a couple of days before we started touring, and I felt even after two days of rehearsal our first gig was horrible! Then there's been other times where we've just got off the plane and hadn't seen each other in six months or whatever, got on stage and it was glorious. You just never know!’

Of course, like everyone else, he was unable to tour during the various lockdowns of the Covid pandemic.

‘It was quite frightening,’ he recalls. ‘Thankfully we were able to convince the American bureaucracy that "musician" is an actual job and we were now unemployed, so a lot of us were able to get the unemployment benefits from the state and federal governments. A ton of us were trying to do live streams and all that kind of thing – trying to get up with the technology and failing miserably! Some people would contribute a little something here and there, but I'm not looking forward to going through that ever again.’

Alvin has been very active touring and appearing on a whole host of other people’s albums, but his last solo album was 2005’s acclaimed, rocking, funky Motivational Speaker. There was the Helluva Way single in 2014, but since then...

‘It’s trying to find the right situation,’ explains Alvin, ‘as far as getting a record out there, I had more than one incident where I was going to get this record out there, then all of a sudden it was: “No, we want to do a traditional folky-blues album”, and I was like: “No thanks”.

‘For a minute there we had something going in early 2020 and then Covid happened, so I have to regroup on that and try again. One thing comes up after another, and then I had the elderly parents situation which changed everything and I had to relocate. Hopefully we'll be able to settle into something and get these songs recorded and see what happens.’

Alvin Youngblood Hart’s Muscle Theory play Portsmouth Guildhall Studio on Friday, January 13, doors 8pm. Tickets £13.95. Go to portsmouthguildhall.org.uk.