This new CD is a reissue of an album originally recorded by Ken Emerson in 1997 — a beautifully crafted solo project that helped rekindle interest here in the sound of acoustic steel guitar and other antique instruments.

Reissued by Emerson and producer Michael Cord, the album includes five additional archival tracks.

Emerson is almost a one-man band. He plays slack-key guitar, acoustic and electric steel guitar, rhythm guitar and ukulele in various combinations. A second guitarist joins him on one track; an acoustic bassist plays on three. The diversity of the instruments makes the album especially interesting. The liner notes explain some of the more elaborate arrangements and make it possible to appreciate the distinct sounds of the different instruments and Emerson’s approach to playing them.

Emerson’s career traces back to a memorable debut as the Emerson Brothers — Phil and Ken — and a winning spot on Ron "Whodaguy" Jacobs’ "Homegrown III" album in 1978. The brothers’ original song "Kai Hanupanupa," stood out for its nostalgic Hawaiian/hapa-haole sound.

Phil and Ken Emerson built on their promising debut with their work as Moe Keale’s studio sidemen on his precedent-setting "South Sea Island Magic" album in 1980. While Nohelani Cypriano had reworked the hapa-haole classic as polished Hawaiian disco, Keale and the Emersons played the song as it might have sounded if written a decade or two earlier when guitars and steel guitars were still acoustic instruments.

The Emersons’ affiliation with Keale turned out to be short-lived, but Ken Emerson continued on as a solo artist who often played antique acoustic instruments — some with wooden bodies, others metal, some with the cones or resonators that were used to amplify the sound of guitars and steel guitars before the first electric instruments were invented.