Smokin' Joe Kubek & Bnois King - Roadhouse Research (2003)

If the 10 years these Texas guitarists have spent as a team exploring the world bar by bar has been "research," what they've learned is how to please a crowd. The formula's simple: no-frills songs about women and working for a livin', set to meat-and-potatoes arrangements that leave plenty of room for their guitars to roam. Kubek's six-string snarls the loudest, hitting Albert Collins-style sustains and grinding out beefy chords. King skirts around the fringes with his sweet-toned, jazz-informed fills or works at groove-level, anchoring things with his basic, chopping, R&B-style chording. King's vocals are really his trump card. They're smooth and slinky when he's romancing in "Make It Right" or gravelly as Kubek's fluid guitar when he's a driven man in numbers like "Runnin' Blind." The album ends with the kind of guitar grand finale that sets a crowd on fire just after last call. The tune, "Standing in My Door," lets both six-stringers sting. Bnois King lays down a red carpet of sliding chords and Smokin' Joe struts through, doing his own dirty take on B.B. King's vibrato-laden style, bending notes and letting them sing. Then Bnois take the lead, his cleaner fretboard diction cutting even closer to B.B.'s lines before he returns to the microphone to sing the closing chorus. Fans of the Lone Star State's blues guitar tradition need to check these guys out. --Ted Drozdowski