Railroad Earth mandolin player John Skehan notes that most recording studios are set up so that even when musicians are isolated from each other in separate rooms, they can see each other.

But when the New Jersey-based bluegrass/jam band convened in a three-century-old farmhouse owned by Todd Sheaffer, the band's singer and chief songwriter, the setup was different. As they tracked last year's Amen Corner mostly live, the sextet didn't have the benefit of body language and visual cues. Bass was in the kitchen. The drums were in the dining room. Multi-instrumentalist Andy Goessling was stuck in a bathroom.

"We had a little headphone system where everybody could control their own individual level and everybody else's level," Skehan said in a phone interview last week. "And we pretty much barely had eye contact. We just went into our individual little rooms and put our ears on, and that was the extent of the interaction. ... It does put you in a place where you're just listening."

Most folks don't like to talk about painful personal stuff, such as a failed relationship.

William Fitzsimmons -- who will be performing a Daytrotter show on Thursday, March 19, at RIBCO -- doesn't have much choice.

"I wrote a record on divorce, so I opened the door," he said in an interview this week.

You'd never guess that The Sparrow & the Crow, Fitzsimmons' album from last year that the Boston Herald called a "near masterpiece," is about divorce on first blush. It's unfailingly delicate, intimate, and gentle musically, with folk-y lead piano and acoustic guitar lightly accented with other instruments. And it starts with the words "I still love you" and "I still need you" and what sounds like a reaffirmation of marriage vows. It absolutely does not sound like divorce.

Editor's note: The Dirty Projectors show scheduled for Sunday, March 8, was canceled the day of the show.

Three years into its existence, the variety of acts that Daytrotter.com has brought to the Quad Cities for concerts defies pigeonholing, but they've tended to fall into two broad categories: the highly idiosyncratic and the on-the-verge. (Remember that founder Sean Moeller brought in Vampire Weekend, Blitzen Trapper, and Fleet Foxes before they were big.)

The closing track on Killin' It, the new release from the Quad Cities reggae-rock trio Rude Punch, is called "Payment," and unfortunately it's overdue. Loose and light, the guitars and drums at the outset seem to be searching for the groove, and when they find it 35 seconds in, they sustain it for another four minutes. Brady Jager's singing is heartfelt and nimble, and background vocals and twin guitars add satisfying accents and interplay, while bassist Robb Laake and drummer Adam Tucker are each given opportunities to fill in the gaps. The lead-guitar and drum breaks suggest a band adept at jamming within a song's structure.

I'm guessing the band's CD-release party on Saturday at the Redstone Room will be a good time, as its music goes down easily and has the benefit of familiarity. If you've heard reggae, you'll have plenty of reference points. Most importantly, the band works it right on stage, and "Payment" shows what they're capable of.

But the album itself suffers from a lack of imagination.