Papa's Soul Food Kitchen offers up serving of the blues.

Byline: Serena Markstrom The Register-Guard

CONCERT PREVIEW Walker T Ryan What: CD release party for `13,' acoustic blues When: 6 p.m. today for an all-ages dinner show; 9 p.m. today for a 21-and-over show with Tony Figoli on drums Where: Papa's Soul Food Kitchen, 400 Blair Blvd. Admission: Dinner show is free; $6 cover for 9 p.m. show

Papa's Soul Food Kitchen is ready to launch into the next phase of its blues and barbecue-joint business with local bluesman Walker T Ryan playing two shows tonight.

The restaurant will now be an after-dinner-hours hangout for the older-than-21 set, and tonight will offer special food items for the event.

Ted Lee, who people call Papa Soul, said with his venue he's trying to bring back traditional blues - an acoustic-based style that reminds him how music used to be played before electric guitars took over.

"We're going to try to make it a real special event," Papa Soul said. "We're not a frilly place. We're just going to let our food and music do it all."

When asked why he wanted Ryan perform the first big show, he said, "Have you heard his CD? It doesn't get any better."

The show is the first local release party for Ryan's studio album, `13,' a work that features 13 cuts of his signature "taproot" style; "old blues, deep in the tradition, yet alive in the moment," according to his news bio.

Ryan, 60, has been living in Eugene for almost 20 years, but until recently put his music at a lower priority to earn a steady income to support his family. Now that his daughter is in college, he can go back to performing and recording the music he's loved since he was a child.

For today's shows, he said he'll stay on the lighter side of the blues.

"I'm gonna have fun, hopefully get people dancing," he said. "My idea is just to have a good time."

As a live performer, he considers himself a "songster," somewhat of a stylistic chameleon depending on the mood of the room. His repertoire includes 300 songs, most of which are not his own.

"I'm not a prolific writer. I'm never going to put out an album that's all my stuff," he said. "I'm a good songwriter when I write a good song, but if I had to do it (to survive), I would die."

On `13,' six of the songs are originals. Six are by such artists as Willie Dixon and Jimmy Oden, and there's one traditional: "Desperate Man Blues."

Although Ryan realizes we live in a digital world where the song order doesn't matter the way it did in the golden days of vinyl, he still approaches the process as making an album.

Like a live performance, he said a CD should have an arc. On the album, Ryan's arc lifts off to an energetic, rousing start with the Dixon song "Mellow Down Easy" and ends on a similar uptempo beat with his original song called "Burnin' (Like a Kerouac Coyote)."

As a white bluesman, one of Ryan's goals as a performer is to remind audiences that the music is an African-American art form.

"It was in the real world," Ryan said, noting many people who made significant contributions to blues music died broke and alone.

Right now blues is experi- encing a popular phase, Ryan said. In his 40 years observing American music, he's seen it ebb and flow in popularity as new, mostly white, artists discover it.

The audience, he said, is still primarily white, and he offered a simple explanation.

"It's because we live in a racist country," he said.

Ryan often is credited as a mentor of homegrown guitar prodigy David Jacobs-Strain, who as a 9-year-old started attending Ryan's guitar workshops at the University of Oregon. That relationship, Ryan said, was not so much about notes and chords as about trying to teach Jacobs-Strain why the music is important.

By sheer coincidence, Ja- cobs-Strain has a gig across the street at Sam Bond's Garage at the same time as Ryan's CD release.

Ryan and Papa Soul are calling the evening show "The Down in the Bottom Blues Dance and Ramble." Tony Figoli will join the ramble on the drums.

Papa Soul's place has an outdoor patio where the stage is, but everyone in the restaurant will be able to hear the music.

Ryan considers what Papa Soul is doing with his business a community service, because there aren't many places in town interested in booking traditional blues.

"I pride myself on the ability to take the music to just about anybody," Ryan said. "I don't think it's an exclusive music or that it belongs in one place."