Turns out that road-dog R&B singer Southside Johnny Lyon has long had a soft spot for the music of Tom Waits. Instead of trying to cop Waits’ avant-gardisms, though, Southside put his own stamp the material by singing over big band arrangements by Richie “La Bamba” Rosenberg.

Southside’s gravelly, lived-in pipes prove to be the ideal delivery system for Waits’ lyrics, which range from whimsical to sentimental. He combines his rhythm & blues sensibilities with that of a fedora-wearing singer of classic pop and jazz, beautifully calibrating his performance to range from conversational ballads to big-crescendo belting.

My favorite songs are the ones that downplay the brassy big band charts: “Shiver Me Timbers,” built over a backdrop of accordion and harmonica; the brief ballad “Johnsburg, Illinois;” the New Orleans funeral march of “Tango Till They are Sore,” with its cacophony of horns and harp; the relaxed elegance of the title track.

In all, Grapefruit Moon is a most welcome surprise. (Evangeline Records)

Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes play the Knology Clearwater Sea Blues Festival at Coachman Park in Clearwater on Fri., Feb. 13, 9 p.m. General admission is free.

This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2009.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...