Singer, songwriter, finger-picking and slide-shredding guitarist Chris Mulé puts a mighty fine foot forward on his debut solo album, Down to the Bottom, a bluesy barnburner both deliciously tender and hauntingly tortured over the course of its 11 original tracks.

The album was produced with expert minimalism by Anders Osborne and recorded uptown at Parlor Recording Studio, a self-styled “throwback to the heyday of classic analog recording.” Mulé recruited 15 musicians spanning his native New Orleans’ sound spectrum for a seamless indoctrination into his steadfast, singular artistic voice and vision.

This technique ultimately resulted in songs “grittier, more stripped down and more personal” than tunes he has created thus far as part of the Honey Island Swamp Band’s transcendent swamp-rock.

Among the many guest appearances, standouts include the legendary local percussionist Alfred “Uganda” Roberts, who plies a steady hand and deep groove on nine tracks; guitarist Benny Dominach’s layered textures, from spooky to soaring on six songs, including the album’s top party jam, “Soul for Ya.”

Yet, the star attraction here may be the 1928 Martin D-18 acoustic guitar Mulé borrowed for the sessions. In his capable hands, the instrument evokes the raw emotion essential for the execution of  Mulé’s vision as it immediately hooks listeners into the desperation of the opening “Slow Poison.” Mulé busts out his acoustic Martin for the back-roads boogie of the instrumental “Trouble Brewing”; a rollicking 40-second solo intro to “Lost in You”; and on the concluding “Save My Soul.”

Mulé’s guitar is the perfect accompaniment to introspective lyrics’ pleading for a melding of heart and mind, art and life, that defines the artistic achievement of Down to the Bottom.