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A big example: I generally like my bluesmen to be old black men, long dead or damn near it, from the Delta; not relatively young white guys with gimmicky rhyming band names, shysters continuously playing Mustang Sally until the tune drips like stink-oil from the brick backdrop.
This is a rough time for the blues, as the often alluded to Blues Brothers 2000 marketing phenomenon illustrates. Or the latest slapped-together Stevie Ray Vaughan compilation.
Local musician Rusty Reed transcends this with his honest personality, with his rough candour and, most of all, with his mean control of his harps, of which he has over 500, 12 of them in tune.
"If you're good enough you only need one," he says knowingly.
Limping slightly after knee surgery, performed with skill by the same doctor who patches up the local NHL team, Reed has been allowed some introspection of late as he approaches 40. He performs as a headliner tomorrow night at the Sidetrack Cafe, a steal at the cheap cover.
Then, next Thursday and Friday, he's at Voodoo Lounge with his pared-down, no-guitar band, the Red Ants.
Reed takes the conversation back to the beginning, back to '83 when he was moving from drums to harmonica, staring at harp player Howard Levy as a shining crucifix.
"I hate him, actually," he says, smiling. "He set a precedent for us players that's impossible to live up to. The things he can do. When you learn to play overblows and overdraws like Howard, you have it made. When I began I thought dumping a harmonica in a pitcher of beer was a good idea. What happens when you put wood in water? It expands. It responds easier. I was 16, 15, getting into the Racer Pub and the Mayfield under-age. I started to play the harp 'cause the drum set was too much to carry around. I used to do five months of six nighters in a row. I don't do that any more."
What Reed does now is pipeline for a living, a lifestyle that has both afforded him a beautiful vintage schoolbus to live in on the road and caused his knee to grow old fast.
Reed's vision of solace is barrelling down the highway, cooking Flintstones-sized ribs in his fully equipped 33-foot International bus.
"I'm a lawbreaking kind of guy," he says. "I guess the law doesn't want you to cook on account of a rock coming up and hitting the line. I carry 500 litres of propane; it would be a mobile bomb. But those ribs ..."
He has a family, too, and plays sporadically. His favourite harp is, well ... "I like the chromatic harmonica. It has 64 notes ... it's like having a piano in your mouth, though not as uncomfortable. I also like the bass harmonica, but they're around two grand apiece. If there's a bass harmonica out there anyone wants to donate to the Rusty Reed Foundation, I'd be glad to take it."
Ron Rault will join Reed's band tomorrow at the 'Track.
"He's a fabulous singer, just amazing. Usually I don't like to bring any singers onstage, because when they're done and I get up, everyone's saying, 'Why's he singing?'
"But I love Ronnie. We're just liquor salesmen, anyway, we're not musicians. That's essentially what it's come to.
"We have to play more than the blues to get the waitresses moving."
He analyses the title track on his 1999 release. "Here on Earth might sell a few cognacs. But we have to rock, be more than just a blues band. As long as the taps are flowing."
Well said.