How do you decide a good revivalist? What rating system should be applied? Should it be the slight twists, innovations and modernizations that someone like M. Ward brings to the table? Should it be based on the deference for and flawlessness of the replication, like the garage-rock revival strives for? Does street cred enter into it, like when someone points out Iron & Wine didn't really come from the Deep South?

Listening to the music of Dave Rawlings Machine, I can tell you he can defy any objection that may be raised.

Street cred? Dave Rawlings paid his dues as a songwriter, producer, and session musician before finally recording A Friend of a Friend, his debut LP.

As for the struggle between tradition and modernization, his music contains a healthy balance of both. Working in the field of folk, bluegrass and country, he covers ground from a Bright Eyes cover to the CSNY-esque "Ruby" to the chugging bluegrass lark that is "Monkey and the Engineer." One moment, Rawlings will be singing the naval-gazing folk reinvention of "Method Acting," the next he'll be playing "Monkey"- a fanciful yarn that would sound at home on any compilation of folk standards.

When asked why he chose to throw his hat into folk/bluegrass ring, Rawlings' voice perks up.

"It had always appealed to me - story songs and folk songs - from the time I was a kid," says Rawlings. "I think it's hard to put your finger on why a particular kind of music appeals to you. There are some characteristics of folk and bluegrass that I do find really appealing, like the wide variety of subjects it deals with, the way that songs go right across the board.

"I mean, some of the old songs were actually almost broadsides, you know, back before the news was so readily available to everyone. There was a certain amount of oral tradition that allowed more specific, sort of, stories to end up in song-form, so that people found out what happened over the past ten years, you know?"

"How's About You?" is a good example of Rawlings' fine storytelling. The song, with its easy country shuffle, is wryly sung from the perspective of a man who's seen just about enough of life's absurdities, who's had his fair share of hard times, and knows that the winds of change will take him where they may. All he wants is a hat to keep him dry from the rain. How's about you?

Harmonies are a huge part of A Friend of a Friend. Mostly, the harmonies come from Rawlings' longtime musical partner, Gillian Welch. The two have been making music together for 15 years, mostly with Rawlings singing backup for her. Rawlings' friends and peers are well represented on the album, notably by the inclusion of "To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)," a song that Rawlings co-wrote for Ryan Adams to appear on Adams' Heartbreaker.

Rawlings' version of the song sounds more like a jug-band jam than Adams' version, which sounds kind of like one of John Lennon's trips into blues-rock. It's a kind of mysteriously bittersweet song, expressing both sadness at the thought of growing up, and a resolve that things are better now than they were then.

Honestly, I spent a little too much time talking with Dave Rawlings about "Monkey and the Engineer," a silly song about a monkey taking over a train and driving it for a little while, while the engineer watches helplessly. When asked where all that came from, Rawlings reveals the heart of his record.

"'Monkey and the Engineer' was a song that I had sung a few times," says Rawlings. "I thought it was a funny little story, and I thought it had a funny message about someone who watches someone do something for a while and then eventually decides they can do it themselves - which is sort of the story of this record."

After a life of observing others, Dave Rawlings is finally doing it, himself. And it sounds beautiful.

[Capitol Theater, Dave Rawlings Machine and special guest, Tuesday, Feb. 16, 7:30 p.m., $20 - $25, 206 Fifth Ave., Olympia, 360.754.6670]