As far as the oblivious dilettantes who write the rock & roll history books and essay collections are concerned, Columbus music (and Ohio music too, for that matter) consists of great works resigned to the oddity bin and the acid archives. These are records made by artists who blazed a trail merely in blips. In the grand scheme, it’s perhaps a correct assessment. To find the ones who matter more than most, one need look no further than the holy grail of heartland punk weirdness in Columbus, The Room Isn’t Big Enough by Ego Summit. These are men who made lifetimes of music far beyond the one-off flagship. A couple—Jerry Wick, who recorded it, and Jim Shepard—went much too soon but left behind devastatingly rich collections, and the rest—Ron House, Tommy Jay, Don Howland, and, the subject of this review, Mike Rep—continue on, soldiering through different chapters of a history and future that has yet to cease. All still replant with song and inspiration, much of it even cagy, rattling abandon in old age—a Columbus trait for sure.

Mike Rep certainly has one such CV. He’s known primarily as the perpetrator of Stupor Hiatus, a gloriously raw take on proto-punk and arena rock that began in 1974. Done on the cheap and on Midwestern kinetics, it stands as a DIY/lo-fi landmark. But Rep has subsequently amassed decades of records unbeknownst to most except a legion who regard his quark as fundamental. There’s the impenetrable yet rewarding A Tree Stump Named Desire, or more recently, 2008’s ominous Songs the Grackles Liked, not to mention his legendary work in the True Believers and the Harrisburg Players or his producing—or “lovingly fucking with,” as he has long put it—a slew of influential recordings during that long span. That it took till 2014 for Rep to release a country album is somewhat surprising, though, as he’s always been somewhat of an outlaw cosmic cowboy wandering the plains of Ohio’s immense number of Indian burial grounds. I’ve heard rumors of said album for years now and figured it would appear just as it has, unassumingly, and soon to be regarded as one of his best records. What is surprising is just how “country” Rep’s country album turned out to be.

A timeline is irrelevant. Whether Darby Creek Drifter (540 Records) is an amalgam of Rep’s country covers through the years or something conceived as a concept just within the last few is not the question. There’s enough evidence here (the shift in his voice, for example) to suggest this was a labor of love, and that tried and true traditional country has been in his bloodline for generations. There are a few instances that twist modern bedroom folkies into Rep’s vision of country. His cover of House’s raucous “Booked Taped to My Forehead” is turned into a front-porch jam of piss and vinegar and J. Felty’s “Wreck on the Highway,” a sinister yarn worthy of the Harrisburg mystique is molded into Rep’s downhome liking. Better yet is Rep turning Jerry Jeff Walker’s oft-covered “Mr. Bojangles” into a cross-dressing fiasco, “Mr. Bo Derek.” What’s always been inherent in Rep’s musical endeavors is a sense of humor, or better, a grinning mock of norms and trends. A lifelong apologist for Jimmy and the Doors, his “Five to One” cover is perhaps the best example here, tilted for a campfire and one too many Black Labels. Rep is very much an anachronism, spanning music’s history back to eccentrics like Henry Clay Work, whose 1876 composition “Grandfather’s Clock” is done here as a bluegrass traditional. Dusty and distant, it’s a song done for pure entertainment, remembrance, and homage, but certainly doesn’t sound out of place cued next to a proto-rager like “Rocket to Nowhere” or another Velvets cover from Rep, this time “Pale Blue Eyes,” done beautifully skeletal with the Players in tow.

There are originals here too. Most impressive is Rep’s “She’s an Outsider,” a lilting centerpiece that represents both spheres of Darby Creek Drifter: the endless wanderlust for some kind of enlightenment through his songwriting in the present and the tireless quest for lore and tinder from the ancients that feed into his sentiments. In a word, the album is timeless and should prove Rep—and his peers—should never be regarded as mere oddities.