Well known in the Pacific Northwest but only now meeting my Midwestern acquaintance, CD Woodbury possesses a voice that ear and reviewer metaphor demand be called "muscular." In case you miss the point that Woodbury (vocal, guitars) is tough as well as scary about it, consider the opening "Wicked Grin" (Michael Pickett/Gary Nicholson), a seriously bloody-minded blues version of a murder ballad.

After the unsuspecting listener starts to recover from the shock and the post-traumatic gross-out, he or she will wish for no more. That wish will not be granted, except that the next time it won't be so close to the vicinity of your face. Still, attention has been grabbed, which I take it is the point. Moreover, even if you won't believe it at this stage of the adventure, you will be laughing merrily before you're through.

Bulldog turns out to be among the most accessible and unlikely blues discs I've heard in a while. Much of what rises up from these grooves is not exactly the usual. All the while, Woodbury and his two on-the-road bandmates (Robert Baker, electric and acoustic bass, and Bill Ray, drums on all but one of the 11 tracks) are more than passingly versed in the blues tradition, mixing impressive originals and covers alongside a prehistoric proto-manifestation of the genre, "Spoonful," the folk epic of cocaine and violence credited to Willie Dixon and popularized by Howlin' Wolf but predating Charlie Patton, who first put it to wax in 1929.

On the other end, when they're so inclined, the guys can carry a joke, such as Mark Dufresne's curiously lovable "A Song in There." It is hardly risky to observe that nobody in the history of songwriting has composed, or ever thought to compose even while drunk, a blues tribute to the not exactly Delta-bred Lee Hays/Pete Seeger protest song "If I Had a Hammer," made massively popular in 1962 by Peter, Paul & Mary. Though it's amusing, it's not only a joke. It can sound funny or sober -- as a commentary on PP&M's earnest but respect-worthy call for social justice -- depending I guess on what mood you're in when it hits you.

Woodbury and Michele D'Amour contribute their own heretofore-undocumented blues sub-theme with a meditation on cheap eyeglasses, "Dollar Store Readers," on which subject I recall hearing no song whatever in any genre whatever. As your head still spins, you can find your way to "Little Sister" (the well-traveled Doc Pomus/Mort Shuman rocker cut by everybody from Elvis Presley to Dwight Yoakam) and, rather incredibly, a credible reading of James Brown's "I Got You (I Feel Good)."

I suppose you get this good, first, if you're born with the talent locked in your genes and then you hone it over lots and lots of hard miles on the road. Whatever it takes, it knows what it's doing, and it'll knock your socks off.