Dave Alvin, the former guitar player with L.A. roots-rock pioneers The Blasters and one of the forefathers of the alt-country movement with his band The Guilty Men, lost his best friend, Chris Gaffney, last year, and he got involved in two records released on the same day this past May that were related to Gaffney’s death in different ways.

The first — The Man of Somebody’s Dreams — is an all-star tribute to the songs of Gaffney, Alvin’s Guilty Men band-mate, who in his own work mixed roots rock, ’50s rock, norteno music and more. Alvin, Los Lobos, Joe Ely, Boz Scaggs and more contributed recordings to the disc.

Alvin says it wasn’t difficult to get a disc full of acts to pay tribute to the little-known Gaffney. “He was a beloved figure, especially for someone no one ever heard of,” Alvin says.

“He was a Golden Gloves boxing champ when he was a kid, and that’s about the only thing he ever won at. Everything else was a hard slog for him, and he never got a break. And when he passed away, I decided, ‘I’ve got to give him his break.’ ”

The second, Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women, arose from a spur-of-the-moment decision.

Alvin has been a regular at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, an annual San Francisco roots-music event, and when the organizers came calling last October advising Alvin to “do something different,” he says the idea of an all-woman band just popped into his head.

After Gaffney’s death, “I was depressed and sad and blue,” he says, and the festival organizers leaped at his off-the-cuff idea. After he got off the phone with the producers, he called roots-rockers Cindy Cashdollar, Christy McWilson and Laurie Lewis immediately; they called their friends, “and within an hour I had a band.”

The resulting album begins and ends with zydeco-inspired romps through covers — “Marie Marie” (by Alvin’s first band, L.A. roots-rock pioneers The Blasters) and “Que Sera Sera” — and in between it’s another excellent collection of Alvin’s tradition-inspired songs, that seem to kick up the dust of the American West and simultaneously have the attention to telling detail that has always been an Alvin hallmark, dating back to his Blasters days. “I always wanted to mix rhythm and blues and all that with Ernest Hemingway and Charles Bukowski,” Alvin says. “… But the reality is they’re two different things. And the juggling of those two is where the challenge comes in.” McWilson, Amy Farris and Sarah Brown also have songs on the disc.

Alvin says that the dynamic of being the only man on stage isn’t really any different once the music gets going. But the women and girls in the audience, he says, are struck by the difference.

“As far as I know there has never been a legitimate roots-rock all-woman band. And these are the top women in their field of roots music. To have them all in one band is a pretty amazing thing. And what’s really interesting is watching some of the audiences react, especially women and girls. That’s really eye-opening to me. And I’m about to sound like a college professor, but you look down and see the sense of empowerment on these women and girls’ faces …

“The other night, we played in New York City. And the New York City rock ’n’ roll club waiting staff, they can be a cynical bunch. And the women were going insane.”

It makes a difference to the women on stage, too, he says.

“All the women have been in bands where they were the one woman with five guys, and none of them have been in a group like this. It’s a pretty neat thing.”

It’s been therapeutic for Alvin. “For me it’s been great because it took seven or eight women to take my friend Chris Gaffney’s place. They make me smile; they make me giggle, and it’s a lot of fun.”

Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women play at the Narrows Center for the Arts, 16 Anawan St., Fall River, Thursday night at 8 p.m. Tickets are $28; Call (508) 324-1926.

Roots rock

Evidently, it’s Roots-Rock Thursday in Rhode Island, because you can also see The Hoolios, based in Connecticut, who put together a bunch of American roots styles, particularly country and rock in the style of The Band, with a few full-on country tearjerkers (“I’ll Have to Drink This Over”) and a few jam-inspired pieces. They’re at the Knickerbocker Café, 15 Railroad Ave., Westerly, Thursday night at 8. Tickets are $7; call (401) 315-5070.

rmassimo@projo.com