If neither Al Basile nor Tad Robinson, two veterans of the blues scene, plays guitar or piano, surely one reason is that for the most part their approach is outside the usual revivalist approach to the genre. Each has incorporated jazz elements, obvious or subtle, into his approach, and the material they perform tends to be more blues-inflected than blues-defined. It's easy to think of them at one and the same time, or to place their latest projects together in the same review. They're not identical, though.

Aside from occasional harmonica playing, Robinson is first and foremost a singer. He applies his estimable voice to original songs (largely co-writes) and covers. He draws his inspiration from classic soul singers of the latter 1960s and '70s -- one thinks, for example, of deep masters such as Syl Johnson, Otis Clay and O.V. Wright, who married toughness of sentiment with smoothness of delivery, and vice versa.

The song most listeners are likely to recognize is David Gates' sugary "Make It With You." Alas, I can never bring myself to think of that as anything but a guilty pleasure on its best days. There aren't many of those, by the way. Robinson manages, however, to reduce the guilt quotient about as much as that can be accomplished. To get through it, you need to focus on the singing, not on the IQ-challenged words. In any event, it's a curious choice. It must have been sung at a million weddings since it was a hit for Gates's late, unlamented band/vocal group Bread in 1970. It also counts among the earliest signs that the decade would be up to no good.

Fortunately, Robinson boasts the superior services of the Hi-Rhythm Section, the legendary Memphis studio outfit that charges Real Street with grit and gospel. The songs don't stray from standard elements of love, sex and heartbreak, but in this genre the voice is more an instrument in the way a horn is an instrument. Still, when Robinson has a strong story to tell, the pleasure is multiplied, as in his co-write "Love in the Neighborhood," an epic tragicomedy of behind-closed-doors developments that follow after somebody new, female and available takes up residence on the block.

My impression is that on B's Hot House, a kind of musical novel, singer and cornetist Al Basile has enrolled for the moment in a more downhome school, absorbing different strains from early Louis Armstrong to mid-century Chicago to contemporary guitar blues. While hardly blandly imitative, the first two cuts, "Storyteller" and "Five Roads," align with the models of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. The ostensible landscape of the story overall is the Old South, with all its beauty and treachery. The narrator is a musician who, so we infer, is African-American. On the other hand, Basile, who happens as well to be a well-regarded literary poet, makes clear that we are not obliged to take anything here in its most literal reading.

Whatever its relationship to the larger plot, "Don't Fool With the Truth" is surely directed not so much at liars generally as at one liar particularly. You know, the one who occupies space these days in the White House, fibs habitually, and (let us hope) may at last be learning Don't fool with the truth/ The truth is bigger than you.

Artists like Basile and Robinson have been doing what they do long enough to be bullet-proof, which is to say reviewer-proof. At this stage they can't screw it up, and they aren't tempted to fly off in radical directions. They may fool around with the template here and there, but mostly, they want to keep their hard-won identities strong and their music ever better. You know what you're getting, and you get it here. If the surprises are few, the pleasures are dependable, and there are, as always, plenty of them.