A former Intel executive, Fred Litwin left the corporate life for the indie-label grind in 2000, founding NorthernBlues Music after having been an investor in the Canadian folk label Borealis. “I want this company to add substantially to the blues repertoire,” he writes on the label’s site, “and not just come out with the ‘same old, same old.’”

You’ve got to admire his effort, considering even classical music makes most modern blues look stale. Currently, NorthernBlues has 24 artists, of which you’ve maybe heard of Toni Lyn Washington and Watermelon Slim. The latter had his album, The Wheel Man, named one of the best 10 albums of 2007 by Gibson Guitars. Okay, you might know Eddie Turner, too.

And if you pay attention to local music at all, you probably know Samuel James. I guess you could openly wonder whether music that was contemporary circa 1932 does in fact constitute the same old, same old, but that’s unfair. It’s possible to make the old new again, and James infuses his brand of Delta-based, acoustic guitar-and-a-microphone blues with just enough swagger and grit to avoid becoming one of those portraits done by caricature artists that make you cringe with embarrassment when you see the result.

NorthernBlues clearly took a cotton to James, hooked him up with producer David Travers-Smith (Ani DiFranco), and will this month release Songs Famed for Sorrow and Joy, a better-produced update of James’s sound on Return of Sugar Smallhouse, which took not a small portion of Portland by storm last year. A few songs reappear, including “Big Black Ben” and “The ‘Here Comes Nina’ Country Rag-Time Surprise,” but they aren’t merely rehashings. “Nina,” you’ll hear, is grittier and meaner, even more in line with the George-and-Weezy sentiment of “Here she come, now she countin’ to 10/Looks like I forgot to do those dishes again.”

Throughout the disc, James displays a great feel for the unexpected that’s critically important for the listener’s enjoyment. If he let us get too comfortable, it might be hard to find his old-timey sound memorable, but with subtle touches like the three-chord bounce touched off by a sour note that finishes “Baby Doll,” we’re forced to listen ever more closely, worried we might miss the next pleasant surprise.

He also makes it incumbent upon us to pay close attention to the lyrics, both because they’re frequently finely turned and because he tells such fine stories. “One-Eyed Katie,” a track with a four-note back-beat like Hopalong Cassidy, opens with a really fine couplet: “This here’s a story about one-eyed Katie/She’s all woman but not one bit lady.” Here James’s voice is more relaxed and conversational, too, which is refreshing after so much growl. You realize what a great baritone he has, not quite bass but close.

“Sugar Smallhouse and the Legend of the Wandering Siren Cactus” is magnificent if only for its title, opening very quietly, a laid-back and ghostly guitar, then picking up a more sinister rhythm. The vocals are consistently very high in the mix, which is good here, James seeming to float above the tunes. We’re told that, “of all that’s deadly, out there in the sand/the wandering siren cactus is the first to end a man/It calls you with its beauty, both sight and sound/They find your body full of spines and there’s no cactus to be found.” That’s pretty fabulous, and so is the gotcha finish.

Pulling off an album like this is hard. The dangers of cliché and corn abound. Samuel James avoided both and produced sometime that’s better than classic or contemporary. He made something timeless.

On the Web
www.myspace.com/sugarsmallhouse

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at sam_pfeifle@yahoo.com .