Si Kahn, a longtime songwriter among other pursuits (including playwright), composed all of the songs on Williams Branch is Hard to Find, subtitled "Songs for Strong Kentucky Women." Appalachia's answer to Woody Guthrie, he may be best known for "Aragon Mill," a haunting lament for a dying Southern town. Ironically, the most engaging cover -- well, anyway my personal favorite -- is by the late Irish folk band Planxty.

Kahn's songs often concern ordinary working people living in difficult circumstances yet kept in place by love of family and attachment to place. The political sentiments, usually implicit, occasionally explicit, lean left.

Only two of the 17 tracks are co-writes. One is the title ballad, a collaboration with the noted bluegrass figure Dale Ann Bradley. (Carla Gover sings it.) There is no bluegrass as such anywhere on the album, nor is there abundance of material defined by emphatic oldtime stringband style.

Aside from the occasional countryish number, the folk music is sometimes -- by no means always -- of the coffeehouse variety, if with more interesting lyrics than the usual. On the other hand, the spooky "Dancing with the Johnson Boys" (Maddie Rae Wells) takes the Civil War-era folksong "Johnson Boys" and projects it into a time when all concerned are only spectral presences.

Overall, though, few performers stand out as stand-ins for Sara Carter or Cousin Emmy (Cynthia Mae Carver when off stage). I confess that's a little disappointing, but I also acknowledge that given the current singers' ages, today Carter and Carver may reside only in a foggy realm on the other end of distant historical memory, even in rural Kentucky.

As the album winds down, it moves toward broader, darker themes, performed amid chilly emotional headwinds. There is a strong resistance anthem, "We Say No" (Rosie Gardner), which many will take to heart both for its modern-day resonance and out of our affection for the mountain banjo that drove so many extraordinary protest songs. The closer "Fifty Years" (Charity Gilbert) looks for relief in a happier order beyond the travails of the current dystopia. Let's pray that doesn't take half a century.