Pulling off a double album isn’t easy: They tend to be bloated, navel-gazing affairs that pursue nebulous uniting concepts only apparent to the artists behind them. But with 42 years and 24 albums spent as a wry, craggy troubadour, Loudon Wainwright III has earned the right to a pet project. And while High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project isn’t as dubious as a band’s unexpected space opera about robots in love, it’s still awfully ambitious: It’s a 30-song tribute to ’20s banjo player and country singer Charlie Poole—a “sonic bio-pic of sorts,” as Wainwright describes it in the introduction of the set’s 70-page booklet. As the aforementioned figures and subject matter suggest, this isn’t for dilettantes; this is the album Wainwright wanted to make. But that doesn’t prevent it from being an inviting point of entry to anyone who hasn’t heard of Poole. Chances are, many of Poole’s fans don’t know they’re his fans: His renditions are better known than his name.