He pushed the envelope on music

Guitarist Jim McAuley had no trouble this week recalling his first meeting with fellow guitarist Rod Poole. It was at the home of Nels Cline, well before the three recorded their "Acoustic Guitar Trio" album.

"I was standing in Nels' kitchen, sipping coffee, when these amazing crystalline tones emerged from the living room," McAuley said. "Rod Poole was just tuning up, and already I was mesmerized by his sound."

Cline, a key player in L.A.'s experimental music scene and now a member of Wilco, described Poole as "a true artist, probably a genius" in a note on his website, posted after Poole was stabbed to death on Sunday in the parking lot of Mel's Drive-In.

His wife, Lisa Ladaw-Poole, was there when it happened.

The couple was walking toward the restaurant, after attending a concert at the Dangerous Curve art gallery downtown, when a car nearly struck them and other pedestrians. The musician spoke up; the vehicle's driver and passenger both got out, the latter allegedly with a knife, according to police. A half hour later, Poole died.

A security camera provided images that led to the quick arrest of Michael and Angela Sheridan. They were arraigned Wednesday.

Ladaw-Poole fielded a lot of phone calls this week, many of them from the parents of Poole's guitar students who hadn't gotten the news and were wondering why he didn't show up for their children's guitar lessons.

"These children loved Rod," Ladaw-Poole said Wednesday. "He was really kind with them."

Poole was a highly unusual guitarist, equally drawn to the distorted sound bombs of Jimi Hendrix and the spontaneous microcosmic tracings of Derek Bailey.

"I never could quite figure out how one man with one guitar could generate such an all-enveloping aural space," said Devin Sarno, an electronic drone artist who recorded Poole twice for Sarno's W.I.N. label.

Having left his native England in 1989 to find a more exploratory climate, Poole fell in with a devoted cloister of Los Angeles pathfinders that included Kraig Grady, Brad Laner and Motor Totemist Guild.

Grady, who composes in microtonal scales that employ the frequencies between Western music's traditional 12 tones, introduced Poole to his own mentor, Erv Wilson. Wilson is a pioneer in microtonal music and "just" intonation, which tunes to vibrations' natural mathematical ratios rather than the tempered scales used in orchestras.