Bill Frisell isn’t just a top jazz guitarist. He’s often regarded as one of the top axemen in American music writ large. While he got his start improvising in New York City’s noise-skronk scene, he broke through thanks to his explorations of American music and pop culture, including covers of John Hiatt and Madonna; scores for Buster Keaton films; and “Nashville,” the 1997 bluegrass/improv fusion record for which he borrowed Alison Krauss’ band. Frisell has a gift for running the nation’s culture through the blender of his unique and instantly recognizable guitar sound, which veers from a gorgeous, sustained tone to a piercing, distorted squall.

On his latest tour, Frisell has presented “The Disfarmer Project,” a musical suite inspired by the portrait photography of Mike Disfarmer. (His March 6 show at The Stone Church in Newmarket will not feature the suite or its A/V presentation, but you can expect to hear some of the album’s tunes during the set.)

Disfarmer, born in 1884 as Mike Meyer, was a small-town portrait photographer in Heber Springs, Arkansas. While locals strolling through town frequently stepped into his studio as part of a fun night out, they often found themselves standing in his bare, concrete studio for up to an hour, waiting for Disfarmer to take the picture. The final shots often looked uncomfortable, piercing and odd. 

“I guess he was kind of a grumpy, difficult person, and he wasn’t asking them to smile or do anything in particular,” Frisell explained. “He would just say, ‘Go stand over there,’ and then he would make them wait for quite a while  … You can kind of see inside of those people more than if (he’d said), ‘Okay, now we’re going to take the picture, now you’re going to smile.’  It’s like they weren’t really ready for it when it happened.”

Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts commissioned Frisell to record a suite of music about Disfarmer. The guitarist’s research took him to Heber Springs, where he found himself captivated by the mystery behind this character.

“It hasn’t changed that much there. It’s kind of off the beaten track. It’s still this little tiny town with one main street, and you can get a feeling of what it must have been (in Disfarmer’s time).”

The biggest mystery was Disfarmer himself, about whom little is known. Frisell spoke with the funeral director in Heber Springs, who had known Disfarmer growing up and discovered the body when he died in 1959.

“He had all these stories about how he was this weird, scary guy. He would wear this long, black coat every day, no matter what the weather was … Walk the street, late at night or all night long, and scare little kids.” 

Writing music about Disfarmer’s photographs was a fascinating challenge for Frisell. “I was trying to imagine what he might be thinking or what was going on in his mind as he’s looking through the camera. You can go way out there in your imagination,” he said.

But that doesn’t mean that Frisell can put what he found into words. “At a certain point, I just lose myself in the music itself. Hopefully it has something to do with, or relates in some way to this guy and these photos. But there’s a point where it just kind of jumps off into … musicland.”

That explanation is key to understanding Frisell’s take on American music. While several of his albums started with a clearly defined concept, many of the ideas came from a producer or a collaborator. The 1993 release “Have a Little Faith,” his Ives-to-Dylan-to-Hiatt cover album that skews the notion of the American songbook, was the idea of Nonesuch Records president Bob Hurwitz. It was also Hurwitz’s idea to set Frisell up with the band that appeared on “Nashville.” Frisell doesn’t follow an artist’s statement so much as feel his way intuitively through his material, whether he’s reviving a song from a movie he saw as a kid or writing the offbeat, curious compositions that form his repertoire.

Just as crucial is Frisell’s choice of collaborators, who run the gamut from jazz greats like Ron Carter and Elvin Jones to pop stars Elvis Costello and Norah Jones. On his current tour, Frisell brings violinist Jenny Schienman (also heard on his 2003 world music experiment “The Intercontinentals”), along with his regular collaborator Greg Leisz on lap steel and Lyle Lovett band member Viktor Krauss on bass. This is only one of Frisell’s working bands and only one of the combos that tours with no percussion. It’s also one of the combos he’s most familiar with, and fans at his Stone Church gig can expect to hear the close listening and easy interplay that characterize Frisell’s performances. “That’s how, for me, the energy gets going, is when you get a conversation going in the music,” he said. “It gets stronger and stronger. That’s the best feeling.”

Frisell’s work has followed so many directions, it can be hard to find the thread that guides his work or steers a piece like “The Disfarmer Project.” His music is steeped in American culture and shaped by curiosity and intuition—and it lands somewhere between Main Street and musicland.

Bill Frisell will perform at The Stone Church in Newmarket at 8 p.m. on Thursday, March 6. Tickets are $25 in advance, $28 at the door. To purchase tickets, visit www.thestonechurch.com or call 603-659-6321. Tickets are also available at all Bull Moose locations.