NED EVETT

The story goes that Ned Evett smashed his Fender Stratocaster one New Year’s Eve and fashioned a fretless guitar from the pieces. His ingenuity and virtuosity are well documented, but there’s more to his story. For his sixth album, the journeyman picker moved to Nashville and recorded with King Crimson’s Adrian Belew. The goal: to write great songs about his recent financial and romantic hardships. By any measure, the resulting Treehouse is a dazzling success. Evett mashes the gas on the honky-tonk ramblers, wiles out on roadhouse and gets wistful on country ballads. “Life’s a riddle,” he sings at the end, perhaps a little closer to figuring out the answer.