Both those dizzy in love with bluegrass and those ordinarily indifferent to it will find something to like in Travels & Time, an eclectic recording that manages to touch on just about every style in the genre. It even strays beyond its boundaries into expertly executed instrumental jazz -- not, let us be clear, Western swing -- on three tracks (the standard [from 1917] "Back Home in Indiana," the originals "Procrastination Boogie" and "Nekkid Thumbs"). Gospel and folk show up in cogent selections, and there's plenty of pure bluegrass. No doubt about it, Jim Hurst is a committed listener, and he chooses wisely what he wants to record under his own name.

As regular readers of my ruminations here may recall, I can be counted to complain from time to time of the inanity of much bluegrass writing, with too many songs sounding randomly tossed together for the sole purpose of giving pickers something to show off their skills to. The vocals often end up being just another instrument, and the least interesting because all they're doing is recycling genre cliches.

But in addition to all else that is praiseworthy in his approach, award-winning guitarist Hurst lays down 13 tracks in the company of an extraordinary band. While most albums by colleagues and contemporaries close up shop after 10, rather incredibly no weak cuts are in evidence in this expanded songlist. And oddly, one detects at least as much Gordon Lightfoot as Bill Monroe influence in the melodies, the singing and the writing. Differences, too; the shout-out to Jesus in the liner credits is what one expects in an artist immersed in Southern evangelical Christianity, while the late Lightfoot's compositions were resolutely secular. Even so, the apparent influence, while audible to my ears at least, is creatively absorbed into some of Hurst's overall sound.

Hurst's sacred songs are distinctive, so much so that I didn't quite grasp -- until maybe the third listening, when I fully absorbed the lyrics -- that the opening cut, his original "Mile Marker" (with Jack Shannon), is religiously themed and carried by a striking metaphor. It's a clever move, too, to follow it with a radical change in tone: the hilariously cynical kiss-off (by Kenny Cornell & Elliot Rogers), "She's Your Problem Now," which keeps the jokes coming, each more outlandish than the one before it.

Those with a taste for story-songs (once universally known as ballads before some misbegotten soul, currently residing in Hell, decided they should be defined as slow pop love songs) will find superior examples, among them Jay Randall's unsparing "More Than a Miner," Hurst/Stephen Hylton's wistful "The Boys Who Left Prince Station," and Shannon's heartrending "Last Song I Sang for My Mother," the last of which miraculously escapes sentimental excess to give voice to recognizably authentic emotion.

The most pleasurable surprise, however, may be a sung version of "Reuben's Train," a cryptic traditional song of unknown origin dating back to the post-Civil War era. Among the most widely sung of the oldtime Appalachian folk songs, it is known in assorted variants and by a range of titles (e.g., "900 Miles," "500 Miles," "Riding on That Train 45," even "Ruby, Are You Mad at Your Man?"). It still is performed in the bluegrass repertoire but almost always as an instrumental identified as "Train 45." I'm sure there are pickers who are unaware it has words. Hurst, who knows better, proves it with a stellar reading.