My original object in grouping these five new releases from relatively new blues acts, all acclaimed in their regions and all contestants at the 2006 International Blues Challenge in Memphis, was to look for common elements among young proselytes of America's music. That proved impossible, as they have little in common. The blues is so flexible as to permutation, approach and perception as to not funnel any act of any age into a generational mold. The only thing these five randomly chosen acts have in common is that the blues is in good hands in their hands.

The Roger Girke Band is ready to cut heads in any Chicago club. They've got the forms blues lovers love down. They tell the Friday night and Monday morning stories as well as Son Seals or Buddy Guy ever could. What jumps out in every song is that these six guys are a great match for each other. There's no weak link in this chain. They're obviously exciting live and they flawlessly transfer that excitement to listeners' living rooms on this disc. They demonstrate funk, country, slow blues, New Orleans blues, even third generation pop blues in the tradition of The Band adeptly and with all the warmth one could desire.

Blue Voodoo, a stripped down guitar/bass/drums act with a female belter up front, emphasizes the sultry. One of the nicest things about them is that they always hold something in reserve. Ms. Allen could throw out more woman-specific blues, Jerry Fuller could get overpoweringly loud, Thad Daniels could beat those drums like baby seals and J.P. Hurd could crank up some fast, funky bass lines, but that's not what their mission is. They're intensely focused on the songs they're performing, and they share an ability to play loudly, quietly. They came out of rock and found the blues on purpose, they're happy they did, and their listeners should be even happier about that successful metamorphosis.

At this point in their development, they fall into the "solid" category, meaning that it's tough to criticize them, but they're not unique yet. It's as if they've got all the tools, but they're using them to keep the same old car running and, to make it n a major way in the expanding, competitive world of the blues, they need to be building a one-off formula racer instead. They can do it, but they haven't done it yet.

Tripwire's a trio, guitar, bass and drums. They all sing, and the bassist doubles on harp. They've got the road formula down, with just the right amount of Nashville vocals and Austin guitar thrown onto electric club blues to grab and hold crowds. As long as there are bands like this on the road, the blues will continue to convert rock fans who want something with more life to it. Tripwire reminds us that blues communicates excitement live better than modern rock. Their taste in tunes and songwriting are good, too. These guys can make a career of it, and one hopes their appearance at IBC introduced them to festival planners. Any blues festival would be improved by a Tripwire performance.

Mr. Nick's Blues Mafia isn't afraid to get down in the trenches, to play the fast, jump and patter stuff that's always a tightrope walk. Beautiful harp and guitar tone and B+ / A- vocals with a gutbucket rhythm section. Hey, that's the "snakes, snails and puppy dog tails" of the blues. Here, as with the other new acts, the instruments at no time drown out the vocals. One listens to this CD and remembers, "That's what the blues is made of, that internalized afterbeat, that grabbing and shaking of chords, that plea for pleasure."

The record's put together strategically, too. One gathers immediately that Mr. Nick's Blues Mafia knows all about basic blues, and then they sneak up on listeners about halfway through with some very nice jazz phrasing on drums and guitar, entirely shaking up Howlin' Wolf's "Who's Been Talking." The last cut, "Wee Baby Blues," has it all, sophisticated stops, split second, split tongue harp virtuosity, '50s backing vocals and driving by that snare drum one can hear all the way to the back of a noisy, crowded club.

Eden Brent's Something Cool introduces a special artist, a singer who recognizes the blues as the most effective book in which to write the stories she wants to write and from which to read her favorite stories from others to her listeners. One looks at the song list and thinks, "Please, not another 'Midnight Train to Georgia,' but this one's different, starting with Nashville, country piano, then trumping with masterful, soul-jazz sax, and then one listens closely and with increasing amazement. I have to think the IBC venue quieted down for Ms. Brent pretty quickly. Okay, "I'd Rather Drink Muddy Water" isn't special, but it's the kind of song that a band does once and then gets requests for forever, so the band has to put it on a record eventually.

This is a guitar-free release, too, and we all need more of these in our collections to stay out of that rut with which the music we've been exposed to all our lives endangers us. As te record continues, Ms. Brent just keeps getting better. She's a blues version of Diana Krall, and that's saying a lot. If she achieves the backing and promotion Ms. Krall has enjoyed in jazz, the blues will expand and thrive. Look for her and remember her.

The conclusions one draws from this sampling of IBC acts is, again, absolute confidence that the blues is a great medium for expression, that it is alive and well and that it is in good hands.

Mon Frere

Blood, Sweat & Swords

Cake Records POB1801

www.cakerecords.com

Ought to be popular with the kids. A mix of myth, misdirected testosterone roller coaster and cartoon lineally descended from The B52s, Uriah Heep, the Grass Roots and Petula Clark, this act and release benefit from savvy production. Given the ingredients, this stew could be awful, and it isn't.

It isn't awful by any means. The players, either through training or instinct, create some majestic runs, builds and crescendos in these songs. At no point does it bore. Older listeners might find passages silly, but no one will be bored.

They're trying so hard to be creepy with the album title and cover imagery, but they're really drawn to the light. That internal struggle is fairly evident and darker than Mon Frere intends their songs to be, but that's their business. Let them entertain whomever they want to entertain, as they do, and stick around while they become more comfortable with themselves. Once they do that, they'll put out even better records. Their potential's tremendous.

Anthology

Voices From the Frontline

Crosscheck Records CD8962

www.crosscheckrecords.com

Talking heads from the media and political parties will be happy to tell you all about what's going through the heads of American soldiers in Iraq. Too often, these secondhand, third rate voices write history for us. If you look and are lucky, you can find primary sources and find out what really happened instead. If you care about the War Between the States, put down the textbooks and find, online or in your local library, excerpts from the soldiers' diaries. If you care about current American involvement in the Cow & Plow Revolution, the 8,000-year old war between nomads and settled peoples that has its frontline in Iraq, then a primary source is this collection of recordings.

Soldiers are young men. Young American men listen to rap and hiphop. Rap and hiphop contain explicit language. This record, comprised of brief spoken observations, rap, hiphop and trad. songs recorded by American active duty soldiers and marines. The pieces are about the Iraq action. That's another reason it contains explicit language. Nothing is more obscene than war, which always trades the best, most promising lives on both sides and between the sides for dirt, money and concepts for old men past their prime. To say, "This is a crock of [expletive deleted]," or, "This is [expletive deleted]ed up," about any war is a gross understatement. War is a part of the genetic make-up of our species. We war. Chimpanzees war. Ants war. We wish we could evolve past war. Many civilized people make a conscious effort to suppress and eradicate the urge to war within them. Most nomadic people do not make that effort, but that's another topic. This prose is to focus on what our young men and women are perceiving and conceiving in Iraq right now.

To listen to this record is to meet America's finest. These people are neither confused nor frustrated by their mission, but they enjoy being alive, they miss friends and families and homes thousands of miles away and they miss friends lost to combat beside them. This is a collection of 21st Century frontline diaries.

"Been to war / Force on force / Divorced / Show no remorse for me / Hit with IEDs and mortars nightly / Someone always trying to kill me / Held my son close / But my gun even closer to me / Tok leave, some clapped for me / People question me, I reply / A soldier's all I'll ever be / Fight and die for peace and liberty / They don't understand me / Call me crazy but there's nothing like a smiling Iraqi"

Carey Ott

Lucid Dream

Dualtone Records 803020-1217-2

www.dualtone.com

If I played this for you and told you the artist was George Harrison's son, you wouldn't have a bit of trouble believing me. The Harrison influence, onto which are grafted instrumental break and change set-ups right out of Paul McCartney's toolbox, is pretty much the record, and that's okay. In the first place, there's a reason why those techniques, tones and talents led to global hit after global hit. In the second place, it's 2006, and millions of deserving listeners are simply too young to have been exposed to the Beatles directly, so if Carey Ott wants to John the Baptist for John, Paul, George and Ringo, that's great.

Underneath the Beatle-esque harmonies, playing, arrangements and song structures are Ott's own lyrics, and they are wholly unlike the Fab Four. The Beatles seemed uncomfortable with first person singular songs outside of light romance and extravagant whimsy. Ott isn't that light and he's more philosophical than fantastical in his choices of subject matter.

Twelve cuts. Good stuff to share.

Anthology

Young Scottish Pipers

Arc Music EUCD1999

www.arcmusic.co.uk

Something new from that most traditional of European instruments. These young pipers, it seems, have remembered, through the mist and beyond the bracken, that bagpipes were not just some Highland eccentricity, but integral to a widespread Gaelic culture stretching beyond the Highlands, beyond Scotland, beyond Britannia and Hibernia to Brittany and Asturia, embracing the entire sad, magical, imaginary Celtic empire of The Once and Future King.

Oh, it stirs the heart and heels. That's inherent in the instrument, and infants of several nations first stand to its strains, compelled to wrap pudgy hands around crib bars and hoist themselves up on unsteady legs when bagpipes inject genetic lightning through their ears into their bloodstreams. That's true of all pipe music, from a lonesome, skirling "Amazing Grace" to a full tilt, full kilt Black Watch "Blue Bonnets Over the Border."

What is being developed, new, before our eyes and ears by the young pipers on this anthology is a sophisticated hipness to the studio and an acceptance of technology as part of the instrument itself. Bagpipes, a familiar sound for good or bad, here at times sound like synthesizers; at other moments, somewhat like Morse code. Those who enjoy listening to bagpipes generally suspect that there's probably some ideal listening place at which ideal balance between pipes and the percussion and other instruments that accompany them is located, and these listeners, while enjoying what they're hearing, think, "I'll bet it would sound really good there." Well, there must be where they put the microphones for this entire anthology, because everything can be heard and the balance is perfect. The pipes remain the star, but everything that intends to assist succeeds in doing so.

The majority of these 14 pieces are suites, with multiple, distinctive movements within the opus. Some are introspective, even introverted, while others blossom into lush, orchestral arrangements. By and large, the release is at the same time cerebral and primal, giving equally strong impetus to the listeners' thoughts and feelings. It is the kind of record you can use as a test for new friends. If you like it, and you play it for someone new in your life and he or she doesn't like it, then the two of you have limits to your potential closeness.

Lee Rocker

Racin' the Devil

Alligator Records ALCD4907

www.alligator.com

Twenty-first century Western Swing. An odd, minor, menacing take on The Stray Cats' "Rock This Town" that sounds like the theme song from a '50s movie about a motorcycle gang taking over an innocent, small town and turning it inside out. Disturbing background yelps at several points. Absolutely bizarre brush runs from the drummer.

One of the recurrent rewards of music criticism is the appearance of a record that reminds us that a small combo without a lot of effects and tricks can do something new and great with a song or style. That's what Lee Rocker does. He makes you cry, he makes you fear, he puts you in the caved in, creaking, cracked red leather passenger seat of an old Impala roaring across West Texas and he makes you look twice to make sure he doesn't have horns and a tail while he's putting his foot in the tank and gulping down those white lines on the highway.

Racin' the Devil is a subtle theme album about going from place to place and finding nothing, which means it's all about the going, so it's a sales pitch for the going itself. Somewhat Kerouac. Throughout the rides and hopeful, hopeless pit stops, Rocker delivers his vocals with the soul of Elvis, the spastic energy of Eddie Cochran and the drunken invulnerability of Jerry Lee Lewis, and the music is, well, like a big block engine heating up, burning oil and starting to tick under a blazing sun.

Actually, I'd requested some other CD from Alligator for review here and now, but halfway through the third Lee Rocker song, I forgot completely what it was I thought I'd wanted. Thank you, Alligator and thank you, Lee Rocker.

Smokin' Joe Kubek & B'nois King

My Heart's in Texas

Blind Pig Records BPCD5102

www.blindpigrecords.com

I'm sorry. If these guys would professionally separate, front separate bands and put out separate records, they would immediately start giving us more than twice the joy their joint endeavors bring this reviewer. Their styles don't jive that well. Especially on the live albums that are a huge part of their output, someone's always being drowned out, and it never sounds as if there's much good reason to turn anything up.

Yeah, they're good, they're tight, they're stars, et cetera, et cetera, but most readers wouldn't have to leave their own metropolitan areas to find an act just this good within six weeks. I know that couldn't be said of Kubek or King if they parted ways and set up different road shows. As for this particular CD, recorded at J & J Blues Bar, Fort Worth, Texas, last New Year's Eve, several of the 12 songs sound pretty much alike and three are too long.

Again, I'm sorry. I think this act is a waste of great talent.

Charlie Musselwhite

Delta Hardware

Realworld Records 09463-60122-2-3

www.realworldrecords.com/musselwhite

What a relief that this intense, thoughtful, nice man has gone back into deep exploration of intense, thoughtful, nice music. Well regarded as a blues harmonica player for plenty good reason, Musselwhite is the master of midrange. The sound of some harp players makes one think of harmonica reeds; Musselwhite makes one think of the ten air chambers that make up the instrument's comb. No other master of this diminutive wind instrument does what he does with air.

While he's done cutting edge things with Cuban music, among other experiments over the years, he shows off his best work with thick, tremolo chord runs and a distinctive, muscular way of wrapping the melody around harp lines that are almost, but never quite, standard runs. As his musician generation, those who became known in the '60s and early '70s, ages, Musselwhite's showing vocal durability, too ... Delta Hardware repeatedly brings Paul Butterfield to mind, and Paul Butterfield left us long ago, while Charlie Musselwhite's still here, going strong.

His own take on Delta Hardware, from his website, is a phenomenally good look at an artist from himself: Just a note to let you know that I have finished recording my next album. I was backed on it by my touring band and everybody at the session was very happy with the outcome. It features blues that are modern, but the purists will still like it too. It's real raw and edgy and even primitive at times. Some of the tunes have some very timely lyrics. I play guitar with the band on two cuts. I'm real happy about it; look for it to come out in May.

From his own history and recollection, he has saved for fortunate listeners the hypnotic quality of John Lee Hooker and the Shake-'Em 'Til They Dance insistence of Muddy Waters. He rocks hard when it's appropriate on this record and takes time to reflect and explore when opportunity presents itself.

Ten songs. Very Clarksdale. Very cool.

The J.W. Jones Blues Band

Kissing in 29 Days

Northern Blues Music NBM0025

www.northernblues.com

In a couple of years, J.W. Jones will be old enough to stand on his own in the eyes and ears of listeners. As of this writing and the release of his fourth CD on the respected Northern Blues label, there's still a bit of the child prodigy image clinging to him ... "What's this kid doing foolin' around with this old blues stuff?" ... sort of thing. What he reminds us of, on this and previous releases, is that the young learn faster and better than their seniors. If his voice lacks decades of whiskey, tobacco smoke and bandstand belting damage, his phrasing benefits from dedicated study of his predecessors. His guitar work would be exceptional for a player of any age, and his taste in music in on a level other blues band frontmen should strive for.

Kissing in 29 Days is themed around the classic Kansas City sound, which developed when the rock and roll instrument was saxophone rather than piano and when bandleaders sought serious jazz players for their ensembles. Brian Setzer has carved out a nice niche by crowbarring electric guitar into this ind of music, J.W. Jones follows in his footsteps with more energy and beat than Setzer has shown interest in since Stray Cats days.

Ray Charles alto sax protege David "Fathead" Newman guests on three of the 14 songs here, including a worshipful, happy, funky cover of "Hallelujah I Love Her So." The tenor and bari saxmen and trumpet players labeled "The Wind-Chill Factor Horns" earn their pay throughout the record, the drummer must have puddles of sweat on his drum heads, Geoff Days exercises astute judgment in piano and organ runs, and J.W. couldn't do what he does without that solid bass with a real grasp of afterbeat behind him.

It was tough to stop listening to this record long enough to review the others stacked before me.