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OCTOBER 15
In an age of House of Blues tomfoolery, Delbert McClinton is one of the last of the serious operators. They used to call it roadhouse music, but R&B, C&W, or any of the puny genre titles don’t mean squat to the Lubbock native who taught John Lennon how to blow the harp. As Nick Tosches writes in his typically over-the-top liner notes to McClinton’s latest, “He (is) a master of rhythm, of that elusive and immanent, subtle and primeval thing…that has, in its way, bound and made a flowing of them all, from Hesiod to Ellington to Big Joe to Dylan to the Stones.” Mick and Keith would kill to make a record as good and gritty as McClinton’s new CD, One of the Fortunate Few; recorded in Nashville, it’s a blistering 10-song treatise on the wages of sin, with guest stars like Patty Loveless, Lyle Lovett, and John Prine. Of course, this sort of stuff is too dangerous for country (or rock) radio, so the best place to hear it is onstage, where McClinton has spent most of the last four decades. With Peter Stone Brown at 7:30 p.m. at the Birchmere, 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria. $22.50. (703) 549-7500. (Eddie Dean)