Wavelab Studios in Tuscon is the home studio for producer Craig Schumacher, who along with producer Larry Crane brought Tape Op magazine’s annual conference to New Orleans until Katrina damaged the conference’s homes here, the Fairmont and the Orpheum. Wavelab Studios and Tuscon’s Funzalo Records have put together this album of American indie rock artists to benefit Habitat for Humanity’s Musicians’ Village project, and perhaps because there’s little attempt to be topical, Graciously is exactly what you want from a good various artists album; that is, it sounds like a good hour of radio.

 

Since the label and studio are located in the southwest, it’s no surprise that the artists on the album come from that area. Calexico (coming to One Eyed Jacks September 18), Luca, Howe Gelb (of Giant Sand) and the Friends of Dean Martinez all hail from Arizona. The most distant artist (in many senses) is Robyn Hitchcock, whose “I Wish I Was Doing This” reminds you how he could sound sinister and playful at the same time. The one thing the artists included have in common besides recording at Wavelab is a contemporary roots rock sound, borrowing gently and not always reverently from country and folk. In the CD’s most conventional moments, Seattle’s Richmond Fontaine sings a charging tribute to the riot grrrl band the Gits, whose singer, Mia Zapata was murdered. Gelb and Scott Niblett sing a medley of “I Want Candy,” “I Know What Boys Want,” “Who Do You Love” and “Not Fade Away” that’s wonderfully anarchic.

 

The high point, though, is Steve Wynn and the Miracle 3’s “Riverside.” It opens with an ominous thump on the bass, followed by a quick sting of strings, recalling “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” and a number of late 1960s soul tunes with one foot in country soul and one in the city. The guitar is slightly psychedelic, with notes fading up, quivering, then fading out. After Wynn measures out a couple of lines, the band pounds its way in and the verse is all crashing, stomping guitar and cymbals. The song is not about Katrina, but its images of violent chaos on the water finished by the couplet “Standing on the riverside / and waiting for the tide rise” sounds poetically accurate. Without the Katrina reference, it’s still a powerful, Dylanesque piece of rock ’n’ roll.