Drummer Phil Haynes isn't normally associated with the music of 19th-century America. In fact, he's known as a player committed to the boundary-stretching aesthetics of post-1970s avant-garde jazz. And yet he's made Phil Haynes & Free Country into an intimate, sometimes downright touching portrait of acoustic American strings-and-rhythm roots music. Bassist Drew Gress, cellist Hank Roberts, and guitarist Jim Yanda play as if inspired to the hills by Haynes's reconceptions of warhorses like "Oh Susanna," "Danny Boy," and "Shenandoah." You might generally call it a movement when folks like Bill Frisell and Tom Varner (witness The Window up Above) begin interpolating their jazz chops with folk and country tunes of distant vintage. Haynes is as idiosyncratic as any of the above, never reaching beyond dynamics that are crystal clear in their relation to the tunes. The musicians walk with a midtempo gait at their most spirited, reveling in the mesh of Yanda's guitar and Roberts's cello and jazzophone fiddle. They riff, of course, but in a laid-back reserve that denotes total familiarity and a fascination with the songs themselves. As an unamplified album recorded direct to two-track (even when Roberts sings!), Free Country sparkles with the finish of a polished mahogany table, long on reflections and bright in the best-lit spots. --Andrew Bartlett