Rick Shea and Brantley Kearns

If “country music” to you means fiddles and flat-picked guitars and songs that reside closer to country’s folk-music roots than they do to the clever artifice that is Nashville’s stock in trade, have I got a record for you. Shea and Kearns are veterans of L.A.’s upstart country scene; currently they’re members of the Guilty Men, whose leader, Dave Alvin, co-produced this set with Shea. Kearns is a fiddler, originally from North Carolina, with a keening voice; Shea plays a mean guitar and sings in a resonant baritone; they’re backed by an elite squad of L.A.’s hot-shit country players, including Alvin on one track. Tunes range from the Carter Family and Blind Lemon Jefferson to more modern numbers by Jim Ringer and Mary McCaslin (along with the title cut, a song Harlan Howard wrote for Buck Owens), plus five originals. This one makes a nice companion to Alvin’s 2000 album, Public Domain.