The clichés of folk songwriting have never ensnared Chris Smither, who can spin a street vendor's call into a soul-deep story of romance and emptiness like "No Love Today." Or express his pining for simpler times in an ironic but sweetly touching tune called "Cave Man." Rather, it's the clichés of life that tripped him up. He emerged from New Orleans as a brilliant singer/guitarist -- the author of Bonnie Raitt's early signatures "Love Me Like a Man" and "I Feel the Same" -- only to lose more than a decade of his career to alcoholism.

These solo concert recordings from 1996 to '99 are a best-of from his second wind. They're also proof that the bottle didn't dampen his wit or agile, blues-based picking. Smither pulls a fusion of John Hurt's tumbling lines and Robert Johnson's slash 'n' stomp from his trademark blue Alvarez electro-acoustic, in a personal style that's a perfectly articulated companion for his superbly articulate lyrics. Add to his evocations of life's puzzles and hard twists a grainy voice that seems worn by his travels as a Southern backroads Odysseus -- plus an uncanny sense of time and musical space that lets him pace his "Small Revelations" as if he and the listener were experiencing them together -- and the result is lowdown high art.