In 1976, all she really had to her name was a vintage Cadillac. She was 20-years-old and living in a room rented from the only person she knew there in Tallassee, Florida. When someone asked, “Would you like to go to California? I’m moving there. I need someone to help pay for gas,” Exene Cervenka quickly sold her Cadillac for $300. “Best decision I ever made, selling that car, I’ll tell you,” Cervenka says now.

She left for Los Angeles, where her destiny awaited. There, Cervenka, a poet, met a young musician who called himself John Doe after her words wowed him at a Venice Beach poetry reading. In L.A., Doe had connected with fellow Illinois native Billy Zoom, a wunderkind guitarist drawing from classic Gene Vincent rockabilly and current Ramones punk. Doe and Cervenka became a couple. He wanted to sing her poetry in a band. He wanted to sing her poetry with her in a band.

“I’d never sang in my life and that’s what John liked,” Cervenka recalls. “He was like, ‘Well, I sing great. Why do we need two people that sing great? [Laughs] And we just kept working on it until we came up with some that was actually pretty good.”

With Doe on bass and sharing vocals with Cervenka, Zoom on guitar and the addition of drummer D.J. Bonebrake, the band X was formed in 1977. With Beats-poetry-and-noir-fiction inspired lyrics, alluring guy/girl co-lead vocals and unique mix of rock, punk and roots music, X released their essential debut album, “Los Angeles,” in 1980. More than 40 years later, the debut continues to resonate. The title track has been streamed more than 20 million times on Spotify.

The music of X helped shape the next generation of great L.A. bands that followed them later in the ‘80s. Alt-rock lords Jane’s Addiction regularly covered X’s “Nausea” onstage. Funkateers Red Hot Chili Peppers covered the X song “White Girls” in concert and worked it into their “Mother’s Milk” LP track “Good Time Boys.”

X’s classic tetralogy — also including 1981 LP “Wild Gift,” ‘82′s “Under the Big Black Sun” and ‘83′s “More Fun in the New World” – sound hot and new to this day. In 2003, Rolling Stone named “Los Angeles” to the magazine’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list. That X disc clocked in at number 287 – between Grateful Dead’s “Anthem of the Sun” (288) and Al Green’s “I’m Still In Love With You.” (286). On that same RS list, “Wild Gift” appeared at 333, ahead of Soundgarden’s “Superunknown,” Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung” and Jay-Z’s “The Black Album.”

[And since AL.com is an Alabama-based media outlet, here’s a relevant factoid: In 2014, Huntsville local musician/superfan Michael Kilpatrick filled in as a touring musician with X. At first it was supposed to only be for a dozen or so gigs, but ended up being a year of shows.]

In 2020, X, released the band’s eighth studio album, “Alphabetland,” their first LP in 27 years and the original lineup first together in 35 years. Song like the charging, clever title track fit nicely to the band’s seminal recordings.

The band has several concerts scheduled for the rest of the year, including a Sept. 7 show at The Caverns, a subterranean music venue in Pelham, Tennessee. Showtime is listed as 8 p.m. and swing/jazz revivalists Squirrel Nut Zippers are the opening act. Tickets start at $60 via tixr.com. More tour dates and additional info at xtheband.com. On a recent afternoon, Cervenka checked in for phone interview from her Orange, California home. Edited excerpts below.

Exene, very few bands formed in the ‘70s still active today have their original lineup. How’s X managed to do that?

It has to be luck, doesn’t it? You know, you hope to live a long healthy life and that’s hard to achieve, so I guess we just got lucky that we’re all still around. I don’t know how else to put it.

Having all the original members in X today, there are no missing ingredients, so live or on new recordings, it still sounds like the band that first drew us in. For example, the dual guy/girl lead vocals you and John Doe do together, that are such a signature part of X’s sound. How do you and John go about putting those dual vocals together? Is it mostly instinctual or something you consciously work out?

All of the above. It’s instinctual and you work really hard on it to make it good — certainly the first time you sing a song, it’s not the final version.

For instance, we’re working on new songs, you know, we’re doing a new record this year, right? We’ve got seven or eight [of the new] songs, so we did four live on our last bunch of shows.

The reason we did that is because when you play a song in rehearsal, it sounds the same 50 times, buy you play it once in front of people and it changes really quick. And part of that is because you’re driven to sing it better or sing a higher note because there are people there.

The thing about an audience – and I don’t know if they know this – is they’re the show. Without them we’re nothing. I get to see all those people’s faces reacting. It’s amazing.

There’s seems to be a cool, different energy about bands that have both male and female members. Bands like X, Jefferson Airplane, Sly and The Family Stone and so on. Why do you think that is?

Well, in my opinion, I’m in the best band in the world. I’m talking about the musicians in my band, not me. I think Billy and D.J. and John are just the most amazing, creative, intelligent, best, intuitive, talented musicians.

I’ve played with a lot of people and everybody’s good, but nobody else is Billy. He’s a legend to me. You know, he’s like one of the greatest guitar players ever. And I’m privileged enough to get to watch him work and figure out parts and come up with ideas. He has the best sense of humor, too. I think that’s what kind of keeps us together, even if we do get a little bit sick of each other in a way – you know, 45 years is a long time. It’s so compelling to see what’s going to happen next.

What can you tell us about this new record? What’s the vibe and is it “classic X” sounding?

It’s probably going to be even a little bit more “classic X” than the last one in a way because we’re having more time out of the studio to work on songs. Even though we’re just a little over halfway through with the songwriting and arranging, I would say it has a bit of like a wanderlust feel to it – which is odd because I’ve always had that my whole life.

It seems like John and I, our lyrics right now seem to have places and names and times … A lot of traveling songs. But there are five or six more songs we’re gonna work on and that may change.

Before you all started the band X, you had roots as a poet. Do you think that background in poetry was part of the reason you were able to hit the ground running when you joined X without any previous singing experience? And part of where the wanderlust in your new songs comes from, too?

I don’t know. When you say it that way, it’s interesting because I think I am a bit of a hobo when it comes to my romanticism of the country. I still like touring. I still like traveling.

If you ask me my favorite place to be, I’d say home. And then my second favorite place would be somewhere in the United States, whatever town I want to go to. I’m in love with the whole idea of the open road and traveling, and writing is like that. Wandering troubadours, it is a tradition in poetry and storytelling.

You’ve got to have a story to you, you’ve got to get up and go, you got to get some information and some experience if you want to tell people stories. You’ve got to make connections in your mind that make sense to other people.

And I like to play with language as kind of you know, an art really, right? I like to put different words together. I never get sick of it. I’m lucky I found John — or John found me, I should say. I just got lucky.

What do you remember about the writing of the classic X song “Los Angeles”? It’s the first track on side B of your band’s debut album, also called “Los Angeles,” of course.

You know, it’s just so long ago. I didn’t even know that was the first song on side B. I had no idea because I don’t think of them as records, I think of them as live songs.

John wrote that when we were first kind of together. My friend Faye, our friend, was moving back to England. She left because she was English, and she was moving back to England, and he made up the story about this woman …

But back then, the way he writes and the way I wrote too, we just could romanticize … We were living on and going down to Hollywood Boulevard where all the silent movie stars once were. It was so cool, then in the late ‘70s. So, it was easy to make up a romantic story or a dark story, and John was very good at the film noir kind of song lyric, you know?

And that’s something that’s alluring about Los Angeles bands. That’s the city where people from all over come to go for it and chase their dreams.

You know what it is? It’s Nathanael West, it’s “The Day of the Locust.” And it’s the hard-boiled detective, it’s “77 Sunset Strip,” it’s that kind of incredible world that doesn’t really exist anymore. But it does in fiction and does in song and does in film. So, you know, Sunset Boulevard, all that stuff, it’s just pretty amazing.

“Your Phone’s Off the Hook, But You’re Not” is another classic song from that first X album. Back then a phone being off the hook meant the handset was off the — then landlines only — phone’s switch hook, causing the signal to be busy and preventing incoming calls. But now there’s call waiting and mobile phones. Many people under a certain age probably don’t really know what a phone being off the hook means …

You know, I can’t guide people through the history of culture and language and illustrate for them everything that they’ve lost. I love that our fans are so smart and literate, and that the young ones know just as much about what that means as anyone else. There’s always a 10 percent of the population that kind of gets everything and the rest is just kind of going along on a string, you know?

You’re a hero to many singers, especially female rock singers, who have come after you. Who are your heroes?

I don’t have any heroes. I don’t believe in heroes. As you get older, you get to pick up from all your mistakes and start over, over and over as many times as you want and reimagine your life and reimagine what’s important to you.

I don’t want to sound pretentious, but I do live a much more spiritual life now than I ever used to. And I’m very much connected, I think, to things bigger than, you know, human ego.

So, who do I look up to? I look up to people that I actually know, in my life that are generous and of service to others, which is what I try to be. I try to have a little bit of peace and serenity and compassion and love and focus on that every day and not get too integrated in the world and the kind of manipulations that we’re forced into.

I just appreciate people that are really good at what they do. And as a general rule, I really admire people who are creative and in a very original way, who have come up with something no one else has come up with.

So, if I’m working with someone who’s doing clothes, and they just have these amazing ideas, I just love that person. They may not be a hero, but there’s someone that can look at and go, “Wow, you are so cool. Your mind is so good. You’re so original.

The Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek produced the first four X albums. The Doors were such a magical and legendary band. What was it like recording music with Ray?

Ray was just a one of a kind, incredible, gifted human being. I think of him a lot like John [Doe] who was the propulsion of X, you know, the guy that really made it come together by working harder than anybody else, he’s standing up for the band and stuff. And Ray had that kind of single-minded purpose.

He was also a very serene, kind of guru- like figure, very generous, very kind – but also very tough. He would tell us, “No, that’s not good, do it again.” We were so fortunate to have him.

My only regret during that whole period was we didn’t have the greatest recording studio or engineering experiences, let’s just say. It was hard for him and us to get the sounds we wanted, so sometimes it’s frustrating looking back on that now.

If he was doing this now, I think the records would sound better, which is no criticism of him or us. It’s just what we had to work with.

The New York records of that period because they had real engineers and they had great studios. England had the best people, in London, because they were still doing the people that were like Led Zeppelin type people. In Hollywood, it was like … I don’t know, it just didn’t make any sense. It was a different time.

But Ray was just amazing to be around, he was just great. Everything about him, I remember as being kind of awesome. It was awe inspiring that he was in our lives at all.

One of the things I love about X’s music is even though The Doors were an inspiration for the band, and you all covered The Doors song “Soul Kitchen,” X doesn’t sound like The Doors at all, really. You can hear the same spirit in there, but it doesn’t sound like you copy and pasted or you’re doing cosplay.

For me, can’t imagine coming into this city of L.A. at [age] 20 and not having a clue what I was going to do with my life and then working as hard as I did only to imitate someone. I’m not gonna go to all that trouble just to be some just to not be me. I was gonna do it, me-wise, no matter what, and let it sink or swim.

John had enough talent to sing his own way – he didn’t have to imitate Jim [Morrison, Doors frontman]. I mean, there’s only one Doors. The Doors and the Allman Brothers are like my two favorite bands. The arrangements are insanely amazing. And they’re just really smart musicians. Great lyrics, great music. Beautiful.

I love that you love the Allmans, and I wouldn’t have guessed that. There are so many great Los Angeles rock bands, and to me The Doors are the root of all that. It annoys me some of these hipster kids now think The Doors suck and are uncool.

Who cares what someone else thinks but you? Love was also a great Los Angeles band, but they didn’t speak of the city as much as like [Doors song] “L.A. Woman” or even “People Are Strange.”

When I first moved to Venice, I would listen to The Doors. There was a cafe on the boardwalk, and it was before people used to go there, and it was just me on the boardwalk by myself in Venice, like ‘76, ‘77. They had a jukebox. I didn’t have any money, so I’d stand by the doorway and listen to the jukebox out on the sidewalk, and sometimes The Doors would play, and I’d be right at this building where Jim had lived.

It was just so magical in the fog and the cold. I was all alone and had nothing. It was kind of neat. [Laughs] Yeah, [The Doors] they’re very magical. They’re the greatest L.A. band, yes, for sure.

In late ‘70s Los Angeles, you were at the vanguard of this new wave of female rockers in L.A., also including bands like The Runaways and The Go-Go’s. Did you have any kind of camaraderie with those musicians?

You know, we weren’t split up into genders. Kind of like how people pretend to be now where they’re genderless, we were. Because we weren’t preoccupied with it. We didn’t care who anybody was, what they did, who with. It wasn’t an issue. What was an issue was how fun were you? Could you buy beer? Were you 21 or not? Did you have a car or a phone? Do you have the newest record by Wire? And are you tough enough to get up on stage in front of a bunch of people and take turns with your friends doing that? Are you supportive of each other?

That was all we had, and we didn’t care. Skinny, fat, old, young, Black, white, Asian, blah, blah, blah, Mexican, woman, man, gay, straight. And tell you the truth, I didn’t know who was straight or gay until much, much later after this after the scene was long gone because I never even noticed, and we were blatant about it or anything like that.

We were kids. I was friends with everybody, and I would have little tiffs with people because I was a young, bratty kid, and so were they. Like high school, we would like tease each other and get in little feuds. But mostly, I just love all those people so much.

People always asked me, they look back on things from today’s perspective sometimes and they say, “Well, how much sexism did you encounter?” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” Nobody wanted to exploit us. I was too old. I was 21. No one’s going to go around going, “Hey, let’s get this 21-year-old girl and have sex with her make her a star.” No.

And so that’s my experience. Now, did other people have other experiences in life? Yes. Did other women have bad experiences? Yes. Have I been sexually abused in my life or ridiculed or set aside? Yeah, but you know what you do? You go “F—k you,” and you keep going. I mean, really, is that a big deal?

People are prejudiced against each other for lots of reasons. And, you know, people who are ruthless in the entertainment business, showbusiness, they will exploit each other. They’ll exploit anything they can get their hands on, I wasn’t exploitable, for whatever reason. So, I didn’t experience it. Talk to The Runways and they had a completely different experience. The Go-Go’s had a completely different experience than me. My experience wasn’t that me being female wasn’t an issue really.

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