At first, it's incongruous: you hear the raspy, smoke-filled vocals and intricate fingerpicking guitar, songs from a life saturated with tough times, good and bad women, hard work...but instead of a stereotypical, grizzled Delta bluesman, you're looking at a lanky, fresh-faced fellow in his twenties who looks more likely to head up a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute than cover a Robert Johnson tune. (He does, however, come by the smoky vocals the old-fashioned way: some sets are equal parts playing/singing and smoking/bantering.)

Give him a minute, though, and you'll find that Brian Curran is the real deal: a masterful picker and slide player (who keeps at least three guitars onstage), gifted vocalist and devoted apprentice to the blues masters who moves seamlessly into original compositions. With a handful of other young acts, Curran is generating new interest in a homegrown blues scene that's reinventing St. Louis' storied musical past.

Hear Brian Curran Wed. and Sat. at Broadway Oyster Bar (736 S. Broadway, 314-621-8811), Sun. afternoons at 1860's Hard Shell (1860 S. 9th, 314-231-1860) and Thurs., with Eric McSpadden on harmonica, at Beale on Broadway (701 S. Broadway, 314-621-7880).