Lemhouse got the blues hellhound on his tail

Mark Lemhouse could've easily slipped into the groove of being another in an interminably long line of neoclassic blues guitar wankers, content to play electrified Chicago shuffles and pyrotechnic 12-bar blues 'til the cows come home.

He didn't. Lucky for us, Lemhouse took the longer, harder road on a pilgrimage to that Highway 61 crossroads and came up with "Big Lonesome Radio," a 12-song swan dive into the heart of rural blues.

Lemhouse messes with the devil here, luring him out with his formidable chops as a fingerpicker and singer. Using a National resonator guitar as well as electric guitar hard-wired to the heart of pain and misery, he ventures into fearsome territory. Blues can be a rollick; Lemhouse, instead, dares to visit the dark places of the soul where lightweights dare not tread or, as he puts it, "Where the night shows its teeth."

Yellow Dog Records let Lemhouse and his sidemen peek over the edge to that scarier quarter of the blues that consumed Robert Johnson.

The Northwest resident put himself in harm's way of this music when he moved to Memphis. While playing drums with Robert Belfour, a North Mississippi guitarist, Lemhouse soaked up what he could, learning the power of the thumbpick to lay down bass lines, while pinching and popping three-finger chords at the same time. It's old-school style in the hands of a firebrand acolyte.

Lemhouse, who's since moved back to Salem, opens with Tampa Red's slow two-beat "You Can't Get That Stuff No More." He flirts with the shadows and the mojo with gritty, hardscrabble tunes by Fred McDowell ("What's the Matter With Papa's Little Angel Child") and Johnny Shines ("Baby Sister Blues") before testing his mettle with an original, "Jealous Moon," a Mississippi tango that shows his depth of blues storytelling.

Lemhouse lightens up with "Tappin' That Thing," a Memphis jug band ditty by Yank Rachell. He gets back down to lockjaw-serious business with another original, "Edwin's Lament," a waltz-time blues that opens with eerie slide guitar.

This is all one-take stuff with no overdubs or digital gimmickry. It's dark, twisted and full of ghosts. Whereas Kelly Joe Phelps, another Portlander who broke from the blues pack, has found a sweetly melancholy ache and resonance with his blues, Lemhouse has found the hellfire.