Raw as a shrimp-boat captain’s hands, this inspired set from Louisiana guitarist Tab Benoit is completely in the spirit of that blues-soaked countryside. With a cracked, soulful voice and a rusty guitar attack that fits it like a dirty shirt, Benoit is a roadhouse powerhouse on this collection of well-chosen roots covers and insistent originals. From the primal, Hooker-esque boogie of "Muddy Bottom Blues" to the infectious and simple-minded pulse of Boozoo Chavis’s "Dog Hill" and Benoit’s surprisingly moving ballad, "When a Cajun Man Gets the Blues," this native of Houma, Louisiana, is offering the kind of forceful, unvarnished stuff he learned playing with Raful Neal, Tabby Thomas, and others when he was a teenager. He shuffles playfully through Professor Longhair’s "Her Mind Is Gone" and sways solemnly on Otis Redding’s "These Arms of Mine." The days and the discs when Benoit was gussied up like the next Stevie Ray seem to have come and gone; here he’s just himself, joined only by a rhythm section as he lets loose with ferocious, sloppy guitar leads and smoky, straightforward vocals.