(FORTUNE Small Business) – Hightone records has been serving up a rich gumbo of blues, country, gospel, and Texas swing for the past two decades. The Oakland-based label hit the national scene in 1986 with Robert Cray's crossover blues album "Strong Persuader," a co-release with Mercury Records that won a Grammy and sold three million copies worldwide. HighTone was a pioneer in the "Americana" genre of alternative country music. In 1994 the label released "Tulare Dust," a tribute to country legend Merle Haggard that became the first and longest-running Americana chart album.

This month HighTone releases "Hotwalker," a collage of music and spoken-word performances compiled by Tom Russell, a poet, novelist, and writer of flinty country songs influenced more or less equally by the cowboy tradition and the Beat Generation. "Hotwalker" pays tribute to a lost world called "gone America"—the culture that sprang up when John Steinbeck's Okies hit California. The CD celebrates boxcar hoboes, carnival barkers, and drunken poets passed out on park benches in a film noir Los Angeles.

Russell weaves his own songs and recitations with archival recordings by Jack Kerouac, Lenny Bruce, and a real-life carny named Little Jack Horton. Speaking over the sweet whine of a steel guitar, Russell evokes a honky-tonk music scene "fueled by a million Okies hopped up on Okie moonshine and amphetamines." Through art and cultural archaeology, he brings "gone America" back with a vengeance. — RICHARD MCGILL MURPHY