It is a small joy to get a tribute album that has at least three covers worth sharing The Repeated Listen with friends.

The producers of Resurrection faced the unenviable task of presenting a product that can at least vie for minor attention against Fahey’s own largely available, and mostly disturbingly brilliant, œvre. (I am not the only guitarist who snickered when first told of its release.) The trick to this package is its approach to Fahey as one of our great oddball American Composers (yes, Capital C), rendering most of the contents into — Voila! — interpretations rather than covers.

The project is naturally heavy with guitars, ripe with homage to the master, but not to the point of nausea. There is a heavy reliance on percussion on many pieces, with marimbas plunking out or accenting the melody lines, or drums imitating the sometimes-manic syncopations of Fahey’s right fingers. Besides the possible nod to another All-American Capital C-er Harry Partch, the guitarists can also get out a bit from under the sheer weight of Fahey’s virtuostickal ægis.

I admit some personal disappointment with Pelt’s “Sunflower River Blues,” which I thought a gimme. Jack Rose is now at the forefront of post-JF acoustic playing, but Mike Gangloff (banjo) and Pat Best (double bass) seem to jog behind him out of sync, the whole thing more from obligation than inspiration. Forgivable, as their ayahuasca is truly the finest tribute to Fahey I know.

But later comes Cul de Sac, led by another post-Jf-er wiz Glenn Jones, with one of the classics: “The Portland Cement Factory at Monolith, CA”. Back to interpretation, they were the first rock band to arrange this piece for live shows I ever heard. It was suitably weird and worked.

Another personal favorite, “Joe Kirby Blues”, is also given a kickass “band” treatment by some strangers to me. Bruce Kaphan (lap steel), Davis Immergluck (electric guitar), Victor Krummenacher (bass) and John Hanes (drums) really rip this one for all its worth, and that’s a mother lode. It is an approach to Fahey that works: the right combo of adoration and heresy to stretch the material inside Outsville.

To end, we have Howe Gelb of Giant Sand doing his best copycat of JF’s fingerpicking on an 1888 Emerson Grand upright pianee. What’s not to love?