Monte Montgomery's guitar-playing is so distinctive, dexterous, and seemingly ingrained that it sounds like he might have had the instrument in his cradle. So it's surprising that he could have just as easily played the trumpet.

His first instruments were trumpet and piano, and he said he only took the guitar seriously "when I no longer had a piano or a trumpet at my disposal, and my Mom had an extra guitar. That's what I had. I often joke about, 'Mom, what would have happened if we hadn't lost that trumpet?' ... I think fate had other things in store for me."

He's similarly matter-of-fact about his decision to abandon electric guitar for an acoustic. "I could do a lot of things on acoustic I was relying on electric for," he said in a phone interview earlier this week. "So why not leave the extra guitar at home and the additional two heavy amps I was carrying around for my electric, and just play acoustic? It really was kind of just that simple."

The playing by Montgomery, who will be performing at the Redstone Room on November 17, is anything but simple. In 2004, Guitar Player magazine named him one of the 50 greatest guitar players of all time, and he's been called the acoustic Hendrix.

The opening track of the Band of Heathens' One Foot in the Ether is classic electric alt-country, but a listener unfamiliar with the Texas quintet would be wise to withhold judgment or expectations. "L.A. County Blues" casually segues into soft harmonies recalling the 1970s in "Say," and then "Shine a Light" digs heavily into soulful, organ-heavy gospel.

That diversity of styles befits a group with three primary songwriters who each play multiple instruments, but it also reflects an understanding of the essential similarities shared by different branches of roots music.

"I've never seen blues music or soul music being very far away from country music or bluegrass," singer/songwriter Ed Jurdi said in a recent phone interview promoting the Band of Heathens' November 4 performance at the Redstone Room. "The approach is slightly different in terms of who's singing the song and what they sound like."

Songwriters Jurdi, Gordy Quist, and Colin Brooks - with bassist Seth Whitney and drummer John Chipman - are celebrating the fifth anniversary of their band this month, yet rather than settling on a sound, Band of Heathens has embraced a stylistic sloppiness.

Images by photographer Chris Jones from Thursday's Papa Roach concert at the i wireless Center, with openers Skillet and Trapt. Click on any photo for a larger version.

Papa Roach:

In 2007, Rolling Stone named Matt Pike one of its "new guitar gods," and the High on Fire frontman is notable for being among the two or three least-known people on a list that included John Mayer and members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Wilco, Tool, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, and Radiohead.

Pike is certainly a luminary in the world of metal - both the heavy and the stoner varieties with which he's associated - but he'd probably prefer to keep his appeal selective. High on Fire - performing at RIBCO on October 8 with Kylesa and Torche - is for metal purists, fans of Metallica's Master of Puppets who think that band has been pandering and floundering for the past two decades.

There's none of that desperation for acceptance with High of Fire, partly a function of its method. The songs are less organic than constructed out of often-disparate parts, and therein lies the key to both the music's appeal and difficulty.