Steve Gunn: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Do you know of any good liquor stores in town Or, better yet, record stores Steve Gunn asks me after playing a mesmerizing set at the NPR Music offices. He s a record collector with insatiable taste and a vinylpacked apartment. His ears perk up when I tell him that Future Times coowner Andrew FieldPickering Maxillion Dunbar) stocks the electronic jams at Joe s Record Paradise, and that Red Onion Records is never without a stellar jazz and folk section. Maybe bits and pieces of those sounds hit the guitarist s music, but his work mostly stems from a bushy, overgrown definition of what we often call Americana, with a healthy understanding of the La Monte Young drone. Grateful Dead and J. J. Cale certainly reside in the rubberband bounce of Old Strange, a song that keeps the groove mellow, but will suddenly pop with waterdrop elasticity. The Lurker comes from a much longer solo guitar version that originally sounded like one of Roy Harper s acoustic epics, but with Gunn s trio, it becomes