Live from London is all of three tracks long, thus the shortest recording I have reviewed at this post in the 23 years I've been at it for Rambles.NET. But it comes at a good time, when music of the sort Rita Bliss spins is in short supply and too well crafted to go without notice or encouragement.

The thought of Bliss as an Austin-based singer-songwriter may cause your eyes to roll if you're familiar with the concept, which stretches back more than half a century in my awareness. The scene produced some exceptional music, especially in its early days when the likes of Guy Clark and Michael Martin Murphey led the charge, but long ago devolved from glittering quality to pale quantity. Overwhelmingly, the artists define themselves as country. A few are decent or better, but most are nondescript, which is to say the product of shallow roots. They merit our attention only because, broadly speaking, they're better than what makes it to mainstream country radio. That compliment, however faint, is the best I can manage.

Rita Bliss is no swimmer in the mainstream. Her short disc, apparently taped in a modest urban folk club, holds its own at once as something original and as an approach linked to older music. Austin artists rarely speak of "folk" and usually understand the concept only dimly. Bliss, on the other hand, evinces the late Jean Ritchie, among other mentors. The product of a singing family in Kentucky, Ritchie cut a number of albums from the 1950s into the 1970s and was a revered figure on the legendary New York City scene. Dylan brazenly stole the melody of her "Nottamun Town" variant for his "Masters of War" (they later reached a settlement). Though sadly neglected in our day, she remains a giant to anyone who knows revival history.

On Live, Bliss plays mountain banjo (and, I take it, harmonica; clarifying notes are nonexistent) and sings three expertly self-composed songs. The titles could predate Bliss herself, and by more than decades: "July," "Texarkana" and "Two Dollar Bill." In fact, there is an oldtime song with the last of these names. Beyond that, she provides the spiritually orienting effect of precise geographical locations where the action, told in gimlet-eyed recreations of interactions with an unnamed lover in a vivid natural landscape, takes place. The lyrics and stories resonate in a way that comes across neither quite buried in the past nor solely manifested in the present, yet affectingly carried in either. Ritchie had that gift, while Bliss's guides her in her own direction down tradition's highway.

I'll take these three songs over most of Austin's competition any time. Moreover, I hope that Bliss has a full album awaiting us somewhere along her road. I hope, too, that she proves a worthy influence on others.