Plenty of country artists sing about living hardscrabble lifestyles, but few can actually back up their tales like JP Harris. The nomadic multi-hyphenate grew up immersed in punk and, later, old-time music, falling in love with the latter by hopping around the festival circuit while living out of his van. This sixth studio album from Harris, produced by Old Crow Medicine Show’s Chance McCoy, is a love letter to timelessness. Recorded at McCoy’s Hunter Springs Studio in Greenville, West Virginia, Shaving a Dead Man assembles nine traditional folk songs (and one Harris-penned tune, “Sweet Talk”) that sound, appropriately, recorded in another era, thanks to Harris’ dark and gravelly drawl, his conversational banjo-picking, and his deep reverence for his source material. McCoy’s fiddle adds another voice to the mix, giving these spare tunes greater complexity. Standouts include the ominous and aggrieved “The Three Babes,” which plays with a variation on Child Ballad 79, and the original cut “Sweet Talk,” a short but potent love song that proves Harris is as adept at writing as he is interpreting. Harris closes the album with “Hang Me,” a disenchanted plea from a man nearing the end of his life that is famously beloved by artists including the Grateful Dead and Dave Van Ronk. As he does with each of these songs, Harris puts his own mark on the tune, singing with a sense of hard-earned contentedness that suggests death is a welcome rest after a life spent laboring.