When I first heard that Joe Wood was playing the Belly Up with a blues band, I wasn’t sure if it was the same Joe Wood I was thinking of.  TSOL, Joe Wood?  80’s west coast punk, Joe Wood?  Sure enough when I entered the venue and saw a few True Liberty shirts, and then I had my answer.  But to be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was going to expect never hearing or seeing The Lonely Ones.  Going from punk to blues is kind of like Al Green going from sexed-up R & B to gospel—it didn’t work for me. . .or so I thought.  A little older and a little more tattooed up, Wood stepped out on stage.  As soon as I heard him ripping through a blues riff, I raised my eyebrow in surprise.  “Hell yeah,” is all I thought.  Totally different band, totally different sound but still the same on-stage presence.  Wood worked the crowd who all raised their beer bottles in a cry of approval.  “Fuck yeah, Joe!” the guy next to me yelled.  Tracks like “Livin’ on Death Row” from their last release Blues Out of Long Beach, CA and “Dark Days” are reminiscent of the smoky, bar-brawling, poolhall hustling, whiskey spilling blues.  Humorously I thought to myself that a bar fight was going to break out any moment and Patrick Swayze was going to jump in and bust up the fight.  A rowdier Stevie Ray Vaughan and a mean-punchin’ Albert King, Joe Wood and The Lonely Ones rock the roadhouse sound with a definitive punk attitude.  It was energizing and rebel-rousing.  If there is one thing I could say about the show, “Fuck yeah is right, Joe.  Fuck yeah.”