Cheap Eats
By Dan Leone

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For the past several months, every time I've walked past the small CD shop in Oakland's Montclair Village, I've noticed the big poster in the window for Blues Is My Business, Paul Wood's second album. Although recorded in Memphis, the 10-song CD rightfully inspires provincial pride. Indeed, on the final track, an acoustic bottleneck blues called "The Mojo Man," Wood sings about boogieing with John Lee Hooker (he played and recorded with the late legend) and declares, "Some day I'll go back to Montclair in a long black limousine." That boast is just one of the ways Wood updates time-honored clichés of the genre for his personal ends. "Transforms" might be a better word, for much of the CD has a classic '70s blues-rock feel – thanks to producer-guitarist Jack Holder. A gritty singer, an intense player, and a functional lyricist, Wood should appeal to fans of Stevie Ray Vaughan (heaps of mercurial and squalling electric guitar licks) and Robert Cray (blasts of Memphis-style horns over a tight rhythm section). In "Everything Dies but the Blues" he uses words written by his father, the late beat poet Paul Tulley, and a Hooker-inspired groove-and-growl to make a convincing case that he knows what Tulley was getting at. (Derk Richardson)