Robillard’s Uncommon Road to the Blues

Duke Robillard is a veteran blues guitarist with the right licks but the wrong address.

Chicago, New Orleans, Memphis, Texas--these are acknowledged breeding grounds for blues talent. Robillard’s hometown, Providence, R.I., is known mainly as a good place to go for Italian food.

“It doesn’t help being from Rhode Island,” said Robillard, whose blues-rock trio will play Thursday at the Palomino. He spoke by phone from a tour stop in San Antonio. (Robillard also plays Friday at the Golden Sails in Long Beach, Saturday at the Belly Up in Solana Beach and Sunday at the Loa in Los Angeles.)

“You move to Texas and stay there for a year, and they say you’re cool because you’re from Texas. No one believes that anyone from Rhode Island has that much to offer. But Providence has spawned great musicians from all genres.”

Among aficionados and other musicians, at least, the smallest state in the nation has become a credible source of blues and R&B; talent. Robillard, 40, deserves much of the credit. While in his teens, he founded Roomful of Blues, the versatile, horn-driven bar band that has received three Grammy nominations for collaborations with Big Joe Turner, Eddie (Cleanhead) Vinson and Earl King.

Robillard left Roomful in 1980 to launch a solo career. The four albums he has released since then on Rounder Records reflect an amiable, humorous musical personality and an omnivorous appetite for blues-related styles ranging from big-band jazz to New Orleans struts to Chuck Berry rock ‘n’ roll.

Last year’s “Swing” album was Robillard’s tasty homage to his jazz influences.

The newly released “You Got Me” seeks to stake the singer-guitarist’s claim on blues-rock turf that has proved commercially fertile for the Fabulous Thunderbirds (the Texas band’s bassist Preston Hubbard and drummer Fran Christina are Rhode Islanders who got their start with Robillard in Roomful of Blues). “You Got Me” features backing from a couple of Robillard’s higher-profile friends, T-Birds guitarist Jimmie Vaughan and Dr. John, the great New Orleans piano player.

As Robillard tells it, pursuing his early aspirations as a guitarist took some ingenuity back in the days when he still answered to his given name, Michael. His mother favored academics over music and wouldn’t allow him to have an electric guitar. Robillard got around that by finding an academic application for rock ‘n’ roll: “I devised this idea--there was a school science fair coming up, and I had to do something for a science project. So I built an electric guitar. I won second prize, and I had my guitar.”

Robillard gradually built an impressive stylistic range by absorbing old blues, swing and R&B; records. He puts his genre-hopping ability to wry use on his new album, especially on the title track, in which Robillard punctuates a growling, heavy-rock fuzz-tone attack with helpings of down-home delta-blues slide guitar.

While he has established a following in Europe with occasional tours and music festival appearances in the last few years, Robillard’s U.S. touring has been limited mainly to the East Coast. His coming dates are his first on the West Coast since 1983.

“I realize now if I’d been doing what my buddies in the T-Birds and Robert Cray have been doing all this time, I’d be much further up the ladder,” Robillard said. “I’ve got a reputation and a cult following. Now I’m going to make a more concentrated effort every few months to be out on tour and let the whole country see who I am.”