| Public Domain | |
| Type: | Studio album |
| Artist: | Dave Alvin |
| Cover: | PublicDomainDaveAlvin.jpg |
| Released: | August 15, 2000 |
| Recorded: | April 2000 at My Place or Yours Studio, Glendale, California |
| Genre: | Folk |
| Length: | 1:01:15 |
| Label: | HighTone |
| Producer: | Dave Alvin |
| Prev Title: | Blackjack David |
| Prev Year: | 1998 |
| Next Title: | Out in California |
| Next Year: | 2002 |
Public Domain (subtitled Songs from the Wild Land) is an album by American artist Dave Alvin, released in 2000.
In an interview with No Depression, Alvin stated that during the time of his father's terminal illness, he would go hiking in the mountains and would sing folk songs. "That gave me the idea for the Public Domain record. It finally dawned on me that those folk songs are poor people's therapy... The reason they got into the public domain was they touched a nerve. You're thrown into this world where bad things happen—tragic death and economic injustice—so how do you deal with it? Well, one way of dealing with it is in these songs. It's a way of explaining the world."[1]
"The Murder of the Lawson Family" was recorded by The Stanley Brothers in March 1956. It is based on the mass murder of his family by Charlie Lawson.
At the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards the album won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album.
AllMusic critic Denise Sullivan wrote: "This is the work of a scholar as well as a master craftsman." Robert Christgau wrote: "If Harry Smith is what some people love about folk music, this is what other people hate about it, summed up by a title that claims humility as it sneaks presumption in the stage door—a title worthy of a brilliant record and dishonored by this dull one... It's not that these songs are all obvious or overdone—this nonfolkie had never heard a few of them. It's that they're so soft they squish even when Alvin tries to rev one past you, which usually he doesn't."
All songs traditional unless otherwise noted.