A series of conversations about regional music history, the D.C. Music Salon began in autumn 2010 with a talk called “Go-Go: Not An Intro.” Since that evening, dozens of stories from D.C.’s musical past have found an audience at the Watha T. Daniel Library in Shaw, attracting folks directly involved — or just deeply interested — in local culture beyond the latest restaurant.

Series founder Marc Eisenberg says the salon, which kicks off its sixth season tonight, has always been about storytelling — nothing more, nothing less.

“No one’s trying to sell you a beer,” Eisenberg says. “No one’s trying to sell you anything.”

The folks who gather around to hear tales from the region’s folk-music scene, or the yesteryear of local punk, are probably OK with that. And the personalities who appear on the casual panels, held Wednesdays every two months in the Shaw library’s basement, are paid only attention.

“I really like that no one makes a nickel on this any which way,” Eisenberg says. “I get to look everybody in the eye and say, ‘Nope, there’s no money. There’s no honorarium. It’s just a fun thing if you want to do it.'”

Tonight, Eisenberg begins the series’ newest season with a conversation about guitarist Charlie Byrd, a Virginia native known for his bossa-nova chops. Byrd died in 1999. Tonight, his friends share stories from his musical life, with plenty of tunes to go around.

Later in the season, the salon casts the spotlight over two other significant guitarists from the area: American Primitivist John Fahey (Feb. 10) and eclectic guitar whiz Danny Gatton (Dec. 9). Next spring, it covers boogie rocker Root Boy Slim (April 13), and wraps in June with a chat about local documentary Feast Your Ears: The Story of WHFS 102.3.

“I think we’ve found our audience,” Eisenberg says, “and I think we’ve figured out what types of stuff works best.”

That doesn’t mean Eisenberg has perfected his formula, though. He’d like to make the D.C. Music Salon a nonprofit and apply for grants. Plus, he wants to recruit someone to record the events — he acknowledges that it’s odd a series about history seems so unconcerned with its own — and he wants to cover more diverse territory in the future.

It’s only a coincidence, Eisenberg says, that this season focuses on so many white men.

“We have many seasons’ worth of additional ideas,” he says. “There are many different types of D.C. There are many things that are quote-unquote ‘so D.C.’ We’ll get to all of it.”

The D.C. Music Salon’s sixth season begins at 7 p.m. Oct. 14 at the Watha T. Daniel/Shaw D.C. Public Library. Free admission.

Photo by Flickr user Emilio Küffer used under a Creative Commons license.

From the 1960s until his unexpected death in 1994, Danny Gatton’s speedy fingers peeled off rock, blues, jazz and country licks to a small but passionate local audience. He called his music community in Southeast D.C. and Maryland’s Prince George’s County the “Anacostia Delta,” comparing it to the Mississippi region that birthed Delta blues and rock ‘n’ roll.

Anacostia Delta is also the name of Bryan Reichhardt’s forthcoming documentary about Gatton, one of two in the making — and Saturday night, the filmmakers plan to capture a tribute to the fabled musician at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia. Tickets to the event, called “Celebrating Danny Gatton and the Music of the Anacostia Delta,” have already sold out.

“The arc of the film is really around this concert we are having at the Birchmere,” says Reichhardt.

An Indiegogo campaign video for Anacostia Delta:

Gatton stunned the music community in 1994 when he was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on his Maryland farm. A Washington Post obituary captured reactions from both local and national musicians who “expressed shock about the silencing of a guitarist famous for his mind-boggling chops and blistering speed.” Gatton was 49.

As friends told the Post’s Richard Harrington, Gatton possessed an incredible talent, but he’d never truly capitalized on it. He remained a family man even after — as legend has it — John Fogerty offered him a job playing guitar in Creedence Clearwater Revival. Gatton didn’t like to travel, friends said, and he’d grappled with depression for decades. He preferred to stay near home, in the Anacostia Delta.

Born in 1945, Gatton grew up in D.C.’s Anacostia neighborhood and attended Ballou High School. In 1962 he and his family moved to Oxon Hill in Prince George’s County. A promising musician from a young age, Gatton played local gigs with artists from around town. Guitars weren’t his only passion: He loved old cars just as much.

Gatton had remarkable musical range. He recorded an album called New York Stories with noted jazz players Joshua Redman, Bobby Watson and Roy Hargrove. With his film, Reichhardt seems to want to capture how Gatton — like fellow Prince George’s County resident Roy Buchanan, named a top guitarist by Rolling Stone magazine — played with the greats, but still chose to stay at home.

“People knew [Gatton] here and celebrated guitar players knew him,” Reichhardt says, “but he was not in the popular mainstream.”

Gatton’s scene included the rockabilly, blues, jazz and country musicians who played honky tonks and dive bars across the Eastern Capital region. It’s a culture that Reichhardt has hoped to document for years.

“This is a film I have wanted to make since Danny was alive,” the filmmaker says.

Reichhardt says he’d discussed the idea of a documentary with Gatton before he died, but at the time he was “young and green,” and he didn’t follow through. When Gatton died, he attempted it again but didn’t finish. It wasn’t until he befriended Gatton’s bass player, John Previti — and was urged forward by writer Paul Glenshaw, with whom he’d worked on a 2009 film called Barnstorming — that he revisited the project. Reichhardt calls Previti “the spirit behind the film.”

“John has always wanted to do a film about the entire music scene that Danny came out of,” Reichhardt says. “That’s sort of the genesis of this project.”

Reichhardt fondly remembers his days seeing Gatton play live — and he aims to capture that feeling in his documentary. He and his brother used to see the guitarist regularly at Club Soda, now Atomic Billiards in D.C.’s Cleveland Park neighborhood.

“I would be in awe,” the director says. “Everyone would. It was impossible not to smile at what he was doing. It was just incredible how he would interpret songs… He’d do a funk version of a jazz standard, or a jazz version of a country standard. He was just phenomenal.”

Reichhardt aims to release Anacostia Delta in August 2016, around the same time as another Gatton documentary, The Humbler, is expected to come out. Director Virginia Quesada has been working on the biography film since 1989, five years before Gatton’s death. (Its title references Gatton’s nickname, which he earned for putting so many rival musicians to shame.)

An interview excerpt from The Humbler:

Reichhardt says Anacostia Delta will be more of an appreciation than a straight biography of Gatton. He’ll use footage from Saturday’s Birchmere concert — featuring musicians from Gatton’s universe, brought together by Previti — interspersed with interviews and footage of the guitarist. Bands in which Gatton performed, including The Fat Boys, Redneck Jazz Explosion and Funhouse, are planning to reunite for the show, with appearances from rockabilly guitar man Billy Hancock and octogenarian Frank Shegogue, whom some consider the D.C. region’s first rock ‘n’ roll guitarist.

Reichhardt wants Anacostia Delta to do for Danny Gatton and his community what the film Buena Vista Social Club did for Cuba’s forgotten artists. But there’s one problem: Gatton’s scene doesn’t necessarily have the same allure as the Cubans.

Younger viewers might view the Anacostia Delta scene as a bunch of over-the-hill roots rockers with a penchant for covers, unlike the Cuban artists living amid a U.S. embargo.

The director acknowledges that he has concerns. “I am worried,” Reichhardt says, “and the musicians are worried, too. Many of [Gatton’s] bandmates fear that his music will vanish. The fact that he was as great as he was and that this area as musical as it was will be forgotten.”

But Reichhardt has hope for what his film can accomplish. “Maybe we can create a renaissance for this musical scene,” he says.

Top photo: Still captured from the Anacostia Delta documentary.

“Celebrating Danny Gatton and the Music of the Anacostia Delta” takes place Sept. 26 at Birchmere. Tickets are sold out.

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