He's no historian, but he is a player...very interesting choice of tunes.
BTW, I'll ALWAYS believe that knowing where you're coming from, musically, is critical. The time-period, politics, technology, cultural issues...all these things make music what it is, and differentiates the types of music from each other. Music is obviously not created in a vacuum. If you don't know where you came from, you won't get to where you're going, musically.
It's important to know where you're from.
Russ