Andy Cohen can be counted upon to come through with the good stuff. His approach is shaped by the 1960s folk revival, when performers adapted a range of traditional and trad-based vernacular genres to guitar, with growing facility and sophistication over the years. Cohen has been playing for decades, issuing recordings every few years. Each documents his gifts as a finger-picker and slide guitarist, not to mention the owner and user of a gravelly baritone nicely suited to the songs.

The bulk of them (Tryin' to Get Home being no exception) consist of pre-World War II blues and folk. It's notoriously easy to do that sort of thing unconvincingly. This is more true than ever when just about anything worth reissuing from that era is as close as a couple of mouse clicks, enabling you to compare current iterations with the originals, typically to the former's disadvantage. It's hard to triumph over the first generation unless, as some do, one goes with radically revised arrangements (see Cooder, Ry). Not particularly a radical, Cohen remains more or less within the boundaries. He clothes the songs and tunes in a warm tone that draws listeners' attention without burdening them with distracting comparisons. One has the sense that he is doing with them exactly what he ought to be doing to make them live anew. Hard work undergirds the effort, obviously, but Cohen never betrays the fact, rather the contrary.

He also tosses in a few contemporary songs composed by, among more obscure writers, Bob Dylan. "Bob Dylan's Dream" surprised me when I spotted it on the songlist. In it, an early creation, Dylan affects to be far older than he was (early 20s), lamenting all that he has lost over the course of a long, hard life with many regrets.

I have never doubted that the world shares my irritation at such young man's posturing, which is why most fans and scholars regard "Dream" as minor Dylan. On those rare occasions I listen to Freewheelin' these days, cringes follow as the cut runs. Those who know their traditional music will recognize the doom-laden tune associated with the 19th-century "Lord Franklin," which concerns the disappearance of arctic explorer Sir John Franklin and his crew. Dylan borrowed the melody from the British balladeer Martin Carthy, among the first revivalists to record what would become an over-the-water folk standard. To my ear, however, the only "Bob Dylan's Dream" that works is Cohen's. As an actual mature adult, not a kid acting the part, he knows what to do with the song. It turns out that, in the right hands, it's better than it sounds.

I also learn that "Bad Dream Blues" is not the 1920s song I'd presumed it to be, but instead a Dave Van Ronk original from 30 years later. While Bessie Smith's "Bed Bug Blues" (1927) is clearly an inspiration, the lyrics sparkle with the patented Van Ronk wit. Cohen is confident enough to place himself in the company of immortal masters: Blind Boy Fuller, Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Charlie Patton, Blind Blake, Sonny Terry. Even knowing all these from their reissued sides, I register no complaints. Cohen handles them with confidence, grace, and nuance sufficient to grant each its unique identity separate from the one first cut on 78. I hear this, for example, in his thrilling slide arrangement of Hurt's "Talkin' Casey," the Deep South songster's reinvention of "Casey Jones," akin to what his "Spike Driver Blues" is to "John Henry." I also note Cohen's impressively bleak reading of the odd Appalachian ballad "Riley & Spencer."

Tryin' clocks on at nearly an hour, and not a minute falters or fails. As I said, Cohen delivers the good stuff.