Cory Rayborn is a lawyer in High Point, N.C., who, for the last decade, has run Three Lobed Recordings, a tiny, taste-driven label that specializes in the most electric, radiant drones and acoustic, ruminative rambles. Three Lobed's distinguished roster of alumni includes Tom Carter, Wooden Wand, Heavy Winged, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Six Organs of Admittance, Bardo Pond, and a horde of like minds-- basically, a fantasy camp for the wilder, woollier facets of what's been, for better and worse, dubbed New Weird America.

Since 2008, Three Lobed also released two LPs by Jack Rose, the acoustic guitarist generally accepted as his form's giant. In the 1990s with the band Pelt, Rose made the sort of eternal atmospheres that suggested La Monte Young relocating to the foot of Appalachia. At the turn of the decade, Rose turned his fingers to a series of progressively ambitious solo guitar albums. The early work owed obvious debts to John Fahey, but Rose's parallel explorations of Middle Eastern music and the blues, bluegrass, and string band music pushed him to new shapes and sounds. When he died on December 5, 2009, he was on a serious hot streak. A full-length collaboration with Virginia string band the Black Twig Pickers and its then-forthcoming follow-up-- his ecstatic Thrill Jockey Records debut, Luck in the Valley, recorded with many of the same musicians-- stand as two of his career's best. With a technique and tone that seemed slowly carved from the trunk of an age-old oak, Rose was the well-listened, workmanlike advocate for the future of American primitive music. Down with indie kids, skilled enough to stun anyone, Rose seemed poised at last to have an impact beyond his own sphere of influence.

Turns out, he already had: Not long after Rose died, Rayborn sent a late-night mass e-mail to most of the musicians he'd met as a listener or label head, asking if they'd like to offer a tune for his tribute to Rose. There were no length limits and no style guidelines-- only no covers of Rose tunes because, as Rayborn puts it, "Jack would not dig that." By the next morning, he'd secured a contribution commitment from a musician who hadn't even received the original invitation. And so, Honest Strings: A Tribute to the Life and Work of Jack Rose snowballed into a glorious and gargantuan 41-track, seven-hour, online-only ode.

The importance of Rayborn's decision to make the tribute available only through download cannot be understated. Here, it allows for a rare marriage of quantity and quality, since each piece feels as uninhibited as the whole. Among the contributors are the expected-- Byron Coley, the Black Twig Pickers, D. Charles Speer, Steve Gunn, Loren Connors, No Neck Blues Band, and Hush Arbors, just to sample. But the true testament to Rose's legacy and conviviality are those you might not expect-- rock'n'roll bluesman Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi All-Stars, Mogwai's Stuart Leslie Braithwaite, and 90s improvisational outfit Un. As such, it pays its respects without suffering an overload of reverence. Sure, there are acoustic guitar songs, but they come embedded among brilliant beds of rock'n'roll, country, improvisation, drone, spoken-word, book readings, and complete live explorations. It's less a eulogy for Rose and more a celebration of his-- or, really, anyone's-- obsession with music.

Any concerns about 41 tracks of guitarists swiping Rose's style are void from the start: In just the first five cuts, Chris Forsyth offers a repetitive roadhouse number, while recent Rose collaborator D. Charles Speer twists jokes and memories of Jack around a goofy country trot that recalls Roger Miller's "King of the Road". Banjoist Charlie Parr and fiddler Mike Gangloff squeak and squeal through the exultant gospel exit "This World Is Not My Home". Six Organs of Admittance and Cian Nugent do reach for acoustics, but Six Organs' "Drinking with Jack" is a lithe, tender beauty; Nugent, a young Irishman, bends and breaks his themes. And that's just the first 27 minutes of this nearly 400-minute collection, not necessarily the best.

Of these 41 pieces, there are very few baubles or blunders. Even the shortest one-- a patient 90-second reflection for acoustic guitar by Jenks Miller, better known for his drone and metal work as Horseback-- feels weighty. It's simple and sweet and, like the best work of the man to whom it's dedicated, is more concerned with expressing a feeling than evidencing high technique. Aside from a 54-minute reading from Joseph Mattson's debut novel, Empty the Sun, the longest track is a 43-minute live set from a Rose-less Pelt. Titled "Louisville Susurration", the piece unfolds with patience and grandeur. It alone would be a worthy album.

Honest Strings is, at once, an incredibly demanding and non-threatening set. Its variety is either a marathon or a playground, meant as much for listening from one end to the other as it is for bouncing to and fro, picking up new sounds by artists you might not know. The entire set costs $15, too, or less than four cents per minute of music. Thanks to Rayborn's free curation and the free Web hosting of Thrill Jockey Records' digital outpost, Fina, every penny goes to Rose's estate. Much like the parameters Rayborn set for the collection, then, this brilliant mass of music is open to everyone. Now there's a legacy Jack would likely dig.

— Grayson Currin, May 7, 2010

here you go:



recorded live by someone else at the awesome suoni per il popolo festival at the wonderful la sala rossa venue in montreal in june 2006. i was transfixed and drunk and convinced it was a dream, for i dozed.