Those not in the tribal circle of blues enthusiasts tend to think of the genre as being all about pain: She Left Me, he done me wrong, I got no money.

But although a large portion of the blues is, as the song says, a woman cryin’ for her man, the cornerstone really is truth. The best bluesmen are secular ministers, talking to us about what we all already know, but want to hear verbalized. And that’s why we need Mem Shannon.

Shannon’s latest (and greatest) CD, Spend Some Time With Me, further refines his take on Modern Urban Blues: heavily spiced with funk and jazz movements and as smooth as a Saturday night silk suit. But what really makes Mem one of New Orleans’ favorite sons are the lyrics: he’s one of a very few in the genre with something to say.

Sure, he’s got the hard-luck stories: getting paid “with an envelope so thin Stevie Wonder could see through it,” for example, in “Paying My Dues”

But Mem’s booming, can-I-go-to-church-here voice is interested in connecting directly with his audience on a street-real level, like on “Dirty Dishes,” a bringdown to a high-class snob: “I can remember when you couldn’t put meat in your beans.” Other times he reaches an almost poetic glory, i.e., the “bullets with no name” drive-by tale of’ “Pray For The Children,” and ”The Last Time I Was Here (Millenium Blues)” is an instant blues-jazz classic, a tale of African-American reincarnation as potent as Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks Of Rivers.”

I could go on and on about the virtues of this CD: the high professionalism, the tasty grooves. But professionalism and groove are things this city is used to. What we have here is a man with a message. Rising star? The hell with, that. He’s there!