R.E.M.’s Peter Buck has been part of the indie-music landscape for more than two decades, ever since 1981, when his then-scrappy band from Athens, Georgia, put out their first 45, "Radio Free Europe." Longer, really, if you count his days as a record-store clerk and fan. But no matter how big R.E.M. have become, Buck has never stopped being that clerk and fan. He’s pursued and catalogued the music he loves — or thinks he might love once he hears it — with the obsession of a character from the movie High Fidelity, and he’s shared what he’s found with the world. In interviews and conversations Buck hardly ever fails to mention a new band, rare singles, or a foreign sound he’s just fallen upon, often proselytizing with the same fervor white blues artists had for their African-American idols in the 1960s.

This year he’s brought that passion to Fast Horse Recordings, a Texas-based label he started with fellow musicians Barrett Martin and Joe Cripps. Drummer Martin was a member of Screaming Trees and Mad Season and is part of Tuatara, an instrumental world-music-inspired outfit that also includes guitarist Buck. Cripps is the drummer for the Texas-based Brave Combo, a rock-fueled band who began incorporating polkas, tangos, and Gypsy music into their sound around the same time R.E.M. were forming.

Buck explains that he, Cripps, and Martin met in Cuba roughly four years ago, "doing a State Department–sponsored song swap with Cuban musicians. Barrett and Joe had been playing together and studying African, Cuban, and South American percussion stuff." Common musical interests and their discussions about how poorly artists are treated by the music industry led to their decision to start Fast Horse.

So far the label has quietly issued CDs by four artists. Tuatara’s third album, Cinemathique became Fast Horse’s initial release in spring 2001. It was followed by Alchemy, the debut of the Wayward Shamans. That outfit — essentially Tuatara without Buck — was started by Martin and Cripps in 1999, and it’s a direct outgrowth of their meeting in Cuba. The Shamans’ music is a swirl of rock and jazz with African and Caribbean rhythms. The third release was the labelmates’ first foray from within their own ranks. When Lightnin’ Struck the Pine marks the departure of skronking Arkansas bluesman CeDell Davis from the Fat Possum label, where the wheelchair-bound 74-year-old guitarist and singer made three critically heralded albums full of deep spirit and unpredictable dissonance. The fourth and newest title is a Brazilian pop offering from Rio de Janeiro singer Mylene Nunes. She mixes samba, bossa nova, and electronica and spikes it all with Brazilian percussion on the disc that bears her name.

"I don’t think we’re gonna sell a million records ever," Buck acknowledges over the phone from his Seattle home, having just returned from a songwriting session with R.E.M. "The idea is that the work we do, we really want to get out to the public. And it’s an artist-friendly label. No huge, long-term contracts. The money is split evenly between the artist and the label — a 50-50 deal. I think with the record industry melting down the way it is, there’s room for a very small label that will let people do exactly what they want artistically."

Davis is a prime example. Inspired by his idol Howlin’ Wolf’s groups, he’d sought for years to make an album accompanied by a large ensemble, but Fat Possum preferred a stripped-down country-blues approach. So Cripps, who also signed on as Davis’s manager and drummer, built a line-up around him that includes Buck, Martin, and R.E.M.’s adjunct guitarist and keyboard player, Scott McCaughey. Sure enough, the result is some of the most jubilant recording of Davis’s career.

The same crew toured behind him this summer and fall, and Buck wants more. "I’ll play with CeDell any time I possibly can. It was inspiring. Talk about spontaneous. He doesn’t make a set list. Every show we did a song we’d never heard before — sometimes four or five. He’s a great artist. I tell people he’s somewhere between Delta blues and free jazz."

Meanwhile, Buck says he and his Fast Horse partners have been speaking to many artists, but what’s certainly on the schedule is a live Tuatara disc and another album from Davis. "And I’ve been talking to friends of mine who don’t have real sturdy record deals. I’m kinda the rock A&R guy. The plan is for us to have a kind of house band with me, Scott, Joe, and Barrett. If we sign singer-songwriter types, we can get together in Barrett’s studio and make an inexpensive record with really good players. There are people that are interested, so I think we’ll be working together on records like that next year."