Tab Benoit plays a stock 1972 Fender Telecaster Thinline, and the gritty, breathing tone of that semi-hollow guitar is the sound of the Louisiana swamps he has spent decades fighting to save. Born in 1967 in Houma, Louisiana, Benoit learned swamp blues not from sheet music but on stage at Tabby Thomas's Blues Box in Baton Rouge, playing alongside living legends like Tabby Thomas, Raful Neal and Henry Gray after finishing high school in 1985. In this deep dive we trace how that apprenticeship in the lazy, dragging micro-timing of swamp blues carried him from a Baton Rouge trio in 1987 to national tours by 1991 and a recording career that began with "Nice and Warm" on Justice Records in 1992.

We follow his move to Vanguard and then Telarc, where "Wetlands" (2002) mixed autobiographical originals with Otis Redding and Professor Longhair covers ...