Paul Pigat’s just landed a great new job. Basically, he gets paid to fly from town to town and talk about guitars, and the rockabilly singer, jazz enthusiast, and Cousin Harley frontman couldn’t be happier, for talking about guitars is something he’d happily do for free.

In fact, it’s hard to get him away from his six-string obsession long enough to talk about his new record, Boxcar Campfire, because he’s so stoked about the obscure 1970s Gurian flat-top he just picked up. Then there’s the rare Gibson L-1 he poses with in his promo shots—the same model legendary bluesman Robert Johnson played. We reminisce about meeting the late bebop guitarist Tal Farlow, one of his idols and a freak of nature whose hands were so big they’d engulf a normal person’s entire forearm. And then there’s the matter of his new gig as a travelling clinician for the Gretsch guitar company, which came about thanks to Cousin Harley’s visit to the annual Viva Las Vegas rockabilly roundup last spring.

Given the opportunity to try out a new Gretsch Black Falcon and matching amp, Pigat gave it a shot. “I figured I’d play the Falcon for about two or three songs,” he recalls, on the line from his Vancouver home. “Next thing you know I’ve been on-stage for 70 minutes and I’m in the middle of my encore, and I’ve still got this Falcon in my hands. It was really, really a pleasure to play. It does everything that all my old archtops do, but I don’t have to worry about it falling apart. So I walked off-stage, and I thanked [Gretsch marketing manager] Joe Carducci, and handed him the guitar—and he said, ‘Well, where can we send it?’ He basically sent the entire rig that I was playing to my home.”

The Falcon will probably make an appearance when Pigat releases Boxcar Campfire at St. James Hall this weekend, but the music he, bassist Tommy Babin, drummer Chris Nordquist, and fiddler-mandolinist Jesse Zubot will be playing is a far cry from Cousin Harley’s hot-rodded rockabilly madness. The new disc is Pigat’s first recorded venture into singer-songwriter terrain, an acoustic-oriented effort that encompasses ragtime, blues, bluegrass, and contemporary folk influences. It’s not entirely bereft of hot guitar solos, but it’s more about mood than fretboard gymnastics.

That mood is, at times, surprisingly downbeat for someone who’s used to whipping audiences into a swing-dance frenzy. Songs like “Dig Me a Hole” and “Nowhere Town” date back to a time when, Pigat admits, he was going through “a real rough patch”.

“Those songs were just kind of cathartic,” he adds. “I’m a really nice guy, normally. But who doesn’t love a murder ballad?”

Elsewhere, the gritty, amplified “John Henry Part 2” and “Tortured” display the reverb-heavy influence of Salmon Arm recluse Herald Nix, another of Pigat’s favourites. (Merle Travis and Tom Waits would undoubtedly make it onto that list as well.) But “Lonesome Whistle” offers a surprisingly light-hearted take on Hank Williams’s jailhouse classic, and at times Boxcar Campfire sounds downright celebratory. Modestly, Pigat offloads some of the responsibility for that onto his recording band, citing drummer Barry Mirochnick’s “deceptive pocket”, bassist Babin’s supportive hands, and mandolinist Paul Rigby’s ability to “dance on the tightrope” for the disc’s deep grooves and sprightly playing.

The record’s also a bit of a reunion for Pigat, his long-time associate Rigby, and Mirochnick, who first played together as part of Neko Case’s touring band. When an opening act abruptly cancelled on the eve of a European tour, Case asked her sidemen to fill in. “I ended up singing the first three songs every night, and I loved playing with those cats,” Pigat notes. “They’re just awesome.”

Alas, Rigby and Mirochnick will be in Providence, Rhode Island, on the night of Boxcar Campfire’s release, playing with—you guessed it—Neko Case. But their absence is going to give Pigat a chance to try out a lineup that might edge a little closer to his relatively newfound interest in the wilder side of jazz.

“It’s kind of a strange mixture of blues, country blues, and the avant-garde all falling together on-stage,” he says, referring to Zubot and Babin’s role as first-call players in the local improv underground. And he hints that his next record might reveal more of his own jazz inclinations—although it’s probably not going to be entirely “free”.

“Maybe if Tal Farlow wore a cowboy hat,” he says, laughing. “That’s what my kind of jazz sounds like.”

It’s a perfect fit, then, for that big black Gretsch.

Paul Pigat plays a Boxcar Campfire release party at St. James Hall on Saturday (November 14).