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

The Berklee-trained, D.C.-based guitarist so far has made his name as a jazz guy and sonic experimenter, but he’s never shied away from music that strives to directly satisfy the listener. That bbbbbrrrruuuuummmmmmm moment? The loud, almost sexy solo that eventually follows? Those sounds don’t need much translation. The wallop is elemental. Pirog wants his songs to go places.

“I just try to write in an intuitive way, and just try to be open and listen for things that I want to hear,” says Pirog, who is one-half of the duo Janel & Anthony with cellist Janel Leppin and has been featured regularly in D.C.’s annual Sonic Circuits festival. Palo Colorado Dream is on Cuneiform Records, the Silver Spring, Maryland, label known for promoting experimental music of all stripes.

It helps that his collaborators on the album, New York drummer Ches Smith and Baltimore bassist Michael Formanek, are equally flexible. They play more prominent roles elsewhere on the album, which has surges of free improvisation and post-rock, as well as stretches directly inspired by thinky ECM-label jazz. (One song is even called “Motian,” after the late drummer Paul Motian.) But their sense of touch and timing, nonetheless, is essential to the explosiveness of “The New Electric.”

“A good melody, and a deliberateness, and restraint—it allows room for things to really speak, and that’s what I’ve been attracted to,” Pirog says.

Pirog’s own work on the song does have some intellectual and experimental components underneath, of course. He plays baritone guitar, but through an effects pedal that makes it sound like a regular guitar. The trio performed the core track live in the studio, but a lot of the final product has been overdubbed. (He rehearsed the album with Smith and Formanek individually, but they didn’t play as a trio together until the album was recorded in March 2013.) Pirog wasn’t concerned about whether that was an un-jazz approach to things.

“It was a question that came up, but I quickly decided that that’s the kind of route I wanted to take. … I like overdubs—Janel and I use overdubs in the studio a lot—and I’ve always thought of the record as being completely different from the live performance,” he says.

For as direct as it is, “The New Electric” wasn’t born from a particular story or motive, Pirog says.

“I mean, I didn’t sit down thinking, ‘I’m gonna write this post-rock song on baritone guitar, for my jazz record’ … the song just came to me. It’s hard to describe where it comes from. … It just kind of presented itself,” he says. “I know that sounds weird, but … I just kind of wait for these little moments where there’s a melody or a chord progression, and then I can build on it from there.”

Anthony Pirog Trio plays Oct. 31 at Paperhaus.

Cuneiform’s eclectic rock output is impossible to categorize, but much of it stems from the late-1970s Rock in Opposition movement, embodied most famously by British group Henry Cow. So as Cuneiform gets ready to roll out its next batch of titles (including a new record from D.C. guitarist Anthony Pirog), let’s take a look at Cuneiform’s finest avant-rock releases to date.

Univers Zero, Ceux du Dehors (1981)
Why not start with one of the original Rock in Opposition bands? On this record, the still-active Belgian group Univers Zero had a strings-and-woodwind-heavy lineup that may have looked more chamber-music than rock, and drummer and composer Daniel Denis’ songwriting owed quite a bit to contemporary classical music. But his drumming continues to keep one foot solidly in rock territory. (For Univers Zero with more of a rock bent, check out guitarist Roger Trigaux’s related ensemble Present—and start with its 1980 debut Triskaidekaphobie, recently remastered and reissued by Cuneiform.)

U Totem, U Totem (1992)
U Totem represented a meeting-of-the-minds between two West Coast composers, James Grigsby and Dave Kerman, both of whom brought a distinct aesthetic—and this first collaboration is masterful. Highlights include Grigsby’s “One Nail Draws Another,” with its woodwind textures and lyrics sung simultaneously in three languages, and Kerman’s “The Judas Goat,” with its rockist rhythmic drumming and metallic guitar embedded into a thoroughly unconventional song structure. I also recommend Grigsby and Kerman’s other bands on Cuneiform: Check out Motor Totemist Guild, starting with 1999’s City of Mirrors—which also features West Coast jazz luminaries like Vinny Golia—and don’t miss 5uu’s, starting with 2002’s Abandonship.

Blast, A Sophisticated Face (1999)
On this album, Dutch nine-piece blast—like Univers Zero—looks more like a chamber ensemble than a rock band: It’s got guitar, trumpet, saxophones, clarinet, violin, cello, cimbalom (a kind of hammered dulcimer), bass and percussion. Less brooding and more convoluted than Univers Zero’s music, A Sophisticated Face almost sounds like a cross between Henry Cow and Frank Zappa’s big-band works. It’s possibly the least accessible album I’ve chosen for this list, but like so much on Cuneiform, it’s worth the effort.

Volapük, Polyglöt (2000)
Volapük is a project of drummer Guigou Chenevier, who was a member of Etron Fou Leloublan, another of the original RIO bands. Eastern European folk influences run through this album, and the orchestration consistently fascinates—with bass clarinet as the rhythm and melody expressed with cello, clarinet, violin or accordion. This may be the catchiest music on this list, full of playful melodies and accessible rhythms—though naturally those occur within unpredictable and complex compositions.

Thinking Plague, Decline and Fall (2012)
American band Thinking Plague is more deeply grounded in rock music than the other bands I’ve listed here. A concept album about humanity’s slow destruction of itself and its planet, Decline and Fall contains all of Thinking Plague’s trademarks: creative, unexpected melodies that require multiple listens to fully grasp; a propulsive rhythm section; intricate interplay between guitar, piano, and woodwinds and thoughtfully apocalyptic lyrics—all enmeshed within a deep and ironic beauty. Thinking Plague has other tremendous albums, but Decline and Fall is so far its ultimate statement.

The Claudia Quintet +1 with Kurt Elling & Theo Bleckmann, “What Is the Beautiful?”
Drummer-composer John Hollenbeck uses his cutting-edge small ensemble (augmented by pianist Matt Mitchell) to create layered, spectral backdrops for the poetry of American writer Kenneth Patchen. The latter is delivered by vocalists Theo Bleckmann and Kurt Elling; Bleckmann delivers with his clear haunting voice, but Elling abandons his usual croon for a gruff spoken-word delivery. It’s as beautiful as it is head-scratching.

Fred Frith & Henry Kaiser, “Friends & Enemies”
Frith is English, Kaiser American; both are experimental and idiosyncratic guitarists known for never making their music easy to digest. Even for each other. And yet, in this compilation of material from across 20 years (1979 to 1999) and styles from rock to jazz to contemporary classical to plain-old-noise, they repeatedly find ways to groove together. “Groove” is not an incidental descriptor, either: The never-conventional rhythms nonetheless make for a good entry point into the music (even though sometimes, as in the wonderfully titled “Twisted Memories Give Way to the Angry Present,” you have to search them out).

Gutbucket, “Flock”
“Flock” actually should be judged by its cover: the jazz-punk therein is as weird, goofy, and ultimately pleasurable as the cartoon that adorns it. Gutbucket channels funk, free jazz, Eastern European music and heavy metal pyrotechnics into the play-freaking-loud ethos. True, it’s always too melodic and thought-through to truly get the DIY feel happening, but it is as danceable (and mosh-able) as they come.

Janel and Anthony, “Where Is Home”
D.C.’s most eclectic and experimental duo brings together cello and guitar. If that suggests a kind of folk-psychedelia, you’ve got the right idea, but filter it through spooky, electronic ambient textures and free-floating improvisational structures that nonetheless shape themselves into logical forms. More importantly it’s soaked in otherworldly (almost, but not quite, familiar in its sources) beauty. In fact, it took me an extra 10 minutes to write this description, because I once again got mesmerized by it.

Microscopic Septet, “Lobster Leaps In”
Breezy and gregarious, the Micros’ 2008 reunion album (after a 16-year hiatus) picks up where they left off: a glorious mash-up of every jazz style they could find. The emphasis is heavy on the swing era, though, with slippery horn riffs, bluesy piano licks, and pounding, danceable rhythms oozing out of every corner. Still, most tunes would be equally at home in some squealing avant-garde loft or upscale jazz club as out on the dance floor.

Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet, “Tabligh”
“Ten Freedom Summers,” Smith’s acclaimed magnum opus, is also a Cuneiform release—but don’t go perusing its 4.5-hour program unless you really know what you’re doing. An excerpt from it, however, opens “Tabligh”—a 2008 release by trumpeter-composer Smith and his Golden Quartet (featuring Vijay Iyer, the poster boy of the jazz zeitgeist, on keyboards). The music is difficult and abstruse, but a wash of moody soundscapes, a la fusion-era Miles (one of Smith’s heroes), makes it go down easier.