Any musical act that takes its CD's title from a Walt Whitman poem has already scored points with me. At least you know you're dealing with smart people who probably have something interesting to say.

True, someone of quarrelsome disposition could turn nose upward before Songs of the Open Road. Then again, even someone of quarrelsome disposition might concede the pointlessness of such a gesture. The inescapable reality is that precious little, if anything, is dislikable about this recording, which feels as if it were cut in 1965 or 1966. As I recall, those were pretty good years for popular music, when folk sounds were meeting rock and pop arrangements as AM radios and record players spread joy and enlightenment throughout the land. Yes, for a few bright, shining moments, mainstream pop did not stupefy one's wits or crush one's brain cells.

Veterans Pete and Maura Kennedy got the very good idea of gathering a bunch of fine songs by other writers, some if not all of them from the mid-1960s even though every one of them could have been. Among the latter is the late Gene Clark's hypnotic biker ballad "Gypsy Rider," learned from a sadly overlooked gem of a country-folk album he cut with Carla Olson in 1987. Because my vinyl collection has long vanished from my life, I never thought I'd hear that song again. For that matter, I didn't even expect to run into anyone who'd heard it. Yet here it is, and thank you, Kennedys, and your most discerning ears.

Clark may be recalled by some as a first-generation Byrd. Other names are more or less household -- Bob Dylan, Stephen Stills, Jimmy Webb, Mahalia Jackson, Roger McGuinn, with familiar songs to match -- while others are there in varying degrees of recognizability: Nanci Griffith, John Stewart, Dave Carter, Nick Lowe, Gram Parsons and Bob Neuwirth. Whoever the composer, whatever the song, however, the quality never falters. OK, the Kennedys don't even begin to displace Dylan's version of "Hard Rain" or the Byrds' of "Eight Miles High," but they aren't trying to. They just like them, and their readings are perfectly enjoyable for what they are. Their affection for the material is pure and, to any rational listener anyway, not susceptible to any but passing critical resistance.

Though I knew Webb's "Galveston" from the 1969 Glen Campbell hit, the Kennedys alert all within hearing that it's actually a much better song -- possibly because it isn't swimming in all those damn violins -- than you may recall if you were around back then. I am pleased to make the acquaintance of a couple of terrific Carter tunes ("Gypsy Rose" and the delirious faux-Dylan "Happytown") as well as Lowe's "Raging Eyes." Just about any Stewart song, even a sad one, lifts my spirits, and "Jasmine" soars. I think the late Mr. Parsons's reputation is inexplicably inflated, but if all his songs were as exquisite as "Sin City" (written with Chris Hillman), I would feel otherwise.

Maura plays acoustic guitar and sings, backed by harmony vocalist Pete with a staggering range of mostly stringed instruments, all in service to the songs and never a false note.