With the death of Jack Rose and a momentary cessation to the endless John Fahey re-issues, it might appear that the American Primitive Guitar feeding frenzy the occurred a few years back is at an end. Of course, Leo Kottke still tours on a regular basis, but there aren’t really any other high profile acts like that working this music any longer.

To stave off complacency, though, Tomkins Square Records began a series of compilations detailing acoustic guitar players residing in the Bay with 2006’s Berkeley Guitar. That first offering focused on just a few players, but its newly released companion piece, Beyond Berkely Guitar, features a handful of folks and almost as many different perspectives on the style.

Currated by Sean Smith, who contributes the eleven minute “Ourselves When We Are Real” here, the disc flows pretty seamlessly from track to track. What’s interesting about the album, though, is that while the primitive guitar style, during the sixties when Takoma Records was a really player in the market, was once a relatively experimental concept. Granted, all the inherent limitations of plying six or twelve strings goes along with it all, but there was an expansiveness that was a part of those early recordings. And while some of those players – Kottke and Robbie Basho specifically – began including vocals, the music still remained malleable.

None of this is meant to mitigate the huge amount of talent related over the course of Beyond Berkeley Guitar’s seven tracks, but most of the work here could have been turned in by a single performer.

Lucas Bolton’s contribution, “Studies Of The Oak As Pertaining To Druidic Rites Of Passage,” sticks out for his odd hammer ons that take him from one note to the next and through the various sections of the song. And while most players here go it alone, Ava Mendoza on her “Redwood Regional Park Blues: Between Hay And Grass” not only works an amplified guitar, but engages a bit of sloppy gypsy swing that sits at the apex of nascent rock and roll and country. The fluidity with which she moves between her assembled ensemble doesn’t hint at the noisier work she sometimes prefers, but does explicate an almost unwieldy amount of talent.

So, while the one deviation from the form is the most notable moment, every track here passes muster. And if your Fahey albums are looking a bit worn, this disc might be the best way to shift some of the burden elsewhere.