Now based in New York, Harrison has a career that includes playing with a big band, writing chamber jazz, wildly reimagining old country songs and composing for string quartets.

Where does that adventurous spirit come from? “It’s how I hear things, how I was put together as a person and just how I’ve wanted to do things,” says Harrison, who performs two shows in the D.C. area this weekend.

On his latest album, Mother Stump — out now on Silver Spring label Cuneiform Records — Harrison steps out even more than usual. “It’s probably my most freewheeling record to date, in terms of playing more rock and blues,” he says.

In the past, Harrison has relied more heavily on his compositional skills, and he typically featured other players as primary soloists. But this most recent LP felt different. “I have something I can do on guitar,” Harrison says. “I’ve never made a record where I featured myself — I just wanted to have fun.”

The album rips to life with opener “John The Revelator,” offering plenty of room for Harrison to flex his warped-but-refined chops.

“The [guitar] solo reaches a fever pitch, and I start scratching the strings with a metal spring,” says Harrison, describing an abrasive, euphoric climax that might impress the late Lou Reed.

Musicians with such diverse interests and talents don’t have many peers, but Harrison — who earned a 2010 Guggenheim fellowship for his work — says his longtime friend Nels Cline explores similarly vast territory on the guitar. The two met in the 1970s, made a record together in the ’90s, and last year Cline performed at Harrison’s annual Alternative Guitar Summit, showcasing lesser-known instrumentalists. (Cline now supports his appetite for sonic adventure with a role in rock band Wilco — a steady gig Harrison admits “would be nice.”)

Scroll down to hear a playlist of Joel Harrison’s influences, peers, mentors and collaborators.

Harrison’s two divergent local shows this weekend suit his heterogenous palate. Saturday at JV’s in Falls Church, Virginia, he plays a set with Cuneiform labelmate Anthony Pirog, the local composer Harrison describes as “a kindred spirit… and an important up-and-coming figure.” He plans to tear through rockabilly, blues and roots music, backed by members of Danny Gatton’s old rhythm section.

Focusing more on jazz and his recent Mother Stump arrangements, Harrison performs two sets at U Street club Bohemian Caverns Sunday. He’ll be accompanied by a fellow D.C. native, drummer Allison Miller (who’s worked with Ani DiFranco, Natalie Merchant and Brandi Carlile), and bassist Michael Bates (who cites both Bad Brains and Joni Mitchell as influences).

Working with Cuneiform Records on Mother Stump was no accident. While watching Danny Gatton play, hanging out at Fort Reno, studying jazz with Bill Harris of The Clovers and even jamming with Root Boy Slim (“a true character,” Harrison says), much of the guitarist’s musical identity formed during his years around D.C. It only made sense to work with a D.C.-area label to highlight those roots.

Much like Harrison’s prior work, Mother Stump pulls from disparate sources — many local, this time around — to grasp at something greater.

“The type of deep connections I feel and try to make through music are what making life worth living for me,” says Harrison. “So I just keep trying to find that space.”

Joel Harrison performs with Anthony Pirog, John Previti and Jack O’Dell at 9 p.m. March 28 at JV’s in Falls Church and 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. March 29 at Bohemian Caverns in D.C.

YouTube playlist: Joel Harrison’s influences, peers, mentors and collaborators

Also read: A Critic’s Guide to Cuneiform Records, parts 1 and 2

Bisi helmed the recording console during the recording of Herbie Hancock’s seminal Future Shock, which featured the landmark sounds of “Rockit,” and he manned the faders during Afrika Bambaataa’s “Shango Message” sessions. He’s produced records for Sonic Youth, Swans, The Dresden Dolls, Bill Laswell, Arto Lindsay, John Zorn, Lydia Lunch, William Burroughs and Ginger Baker, and he’s worked in varying capacities with Brian Eno, Iggy Pop, White Zombie, Helmet, Boredoms, Cibo Matto and filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (on the soundtrack to Down By Law).

Bisi co-founded Brooklyn’s BC Studio in the early 1980s with Laswell and Eno, and he still owns and operates the facility. It was recently the subject of a 2014 documentary called Sound and Chaos: The Story of BC Studio, featuring interviews with many of the musicians he’s worked with over the years.

I talked to Bisi in advance of a local show he plays March 7 at Takoma venue Electric Maid in support of his 2014 release, Ex Nihilo. The following day, he shows the BC Studio documentary and performs at the Windup Space in Baltimore. A man of many interests, he talked gentrification’s impact on music, the religious experience for atheists and learning to accept your own artistic influences.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Bandwidth: In your recent documentary, you talk about the challenges of gentrification facing your studio. Is it still operational? Are you still holding out?

Martin Bisi: Yeah, I’m at home now, above the studio. We’re stable-ish, we’ve got about two or three more years I think. The value of the location increases constantly, and that’s the reason I’m staying put. People have asked me why I don’t get proactive and leave, but finding a space like this is more and more rare.

So you’re still getting studio work?

Yeah, it’s actually less bleak now than it was when we made the film. There’s been a resurgence of people caring about making albums. Just like with vinyl, I thought it was over, but it’s not. I thought it was going away as a culture.

Have you seen a recent increase in concern about fidelity, or a recent fondness for recording studios, too? Do you think projects like Dave Grohl’s Sound City have made an impact?

I haven’t seen Grohl’s documentaries yet, but I’ve been impressed at how they approach specific cities and local scenes. Even a city like Asbury Park, New Jersey, there’s been so much great music from there. It’s in the shadow of New York, but it’s a mysterious, organic community thing that makes a scene work. People tend to put all the credit on certain big names, but it’s everything — infrastructure, clubs, fans, journalists.

You’ve obviously worked with a huge number of artists over the years as an engineer. How has that impacted your own songwriting?

Well, with the album Sirens of the Apocalypse [from 2007], I was kind of mocking myself and my influences. It was a reaction to working with intense people like [Michael] Gira [of Swans] and [Bill] Laswell, like I was trying not to be like them.

I used to have the nickname “The Contrarian” among my friends. Anything I was a part of, I would try and find problems with it, whether it was feminism or Democrats or whatever. In 2009, things changed. My friends would maybe call it my “freak out.” I stopped being a contrarian, I started striving for solidarity both musically and politically. I realized I can’t afford to be a continuous naysayer, and I started actively looking for things that work.

So now my music is darker and has more gravitas. Maybe it works better that way. Maybe I should’ve been doing this all along. Ex Nihilo has more experimentation and more crazy sounds than previous records. I didn’t care about sounding like someone else. I let my songwriting be influenced by bands I’ve worked with and by our shared values.

I actually shamelessly aim to please my peers. Sometimes I’ll do something a certain way because I think, “Oh, if I do it that way, Lydia Lunch will like it.” Sometimes I think we really just make records to please each other.

New York and D.C. have both experienced a level of gentrification that would have been unthinkable only 10 or 15 years ago. How do you feel like that has impacted outsider music?

I accidentally fell into kind of being an activist with gentrification. New York has been pretty resilient though, despite CBGBs shutting down. It takes more than a few clubs closing to kill a scene. But I do think it’s important for the country to have actual cities. If nothing else, because it’s hard to put something back once it’s destroyed. Boston has been screwed — it’s gotten really hard to play there.

On Ex Nihilo, there are a lot of lyrical references to sacred words, and there are choir-like groups of voices alongside operatic vocals that seem to hearken to sacred music. What brought that about?

I’m a Materialist Atheist. I don’t believe in any life force that can’t be explained, and I’m not a spiritual person. Yet, I still possess in my brain all the building blocks for religion or belief in God. That part of me still works. Religion and focused, intense belief create profound works of art. It actually feels good to believe in things. In fact, I feel like I have a fate, even if I don’t intellectually believe it.

When large groups of people come together and chant, like at the Ferguson protests — which were actually more musical than the Occupy protests — there’s a certain feeling, even if it’s not a belief. So, I don’t deny the experience of religion or God, I just recognize it for what it is. The protests I was part of were actually the reason for the group vocals in Ex Nihilo. I’m getting older and taking the long view. I like participating in the human arc of history. It’s like being part of something dramatic and ancient.

Martin Bisi performs March 7 at 7 p.m. at The Electric Maid in Takoma and March 8 at 8 p.m. at the Windup Space in Baltimore.