David Vest is a natural-born house-wrecker, and it won"t take him ten seconds to grab listeners with Rock A While, his first solo release in five years. The new CD features ten Vest originals, plus seldom-covered songs by John Lee Hooker, Fats Domino, Gene Vincent and Willie Dixon. After the opening rocker, Blind Mule heads straight into some of the deepest (and darkest) country blues to be heard, based on a story too wild and improbable to be anything but true. This stuff came from life, not books, just as David learned how to write songs like Magic City Shuffle not by listening to recordings but by playing with Big Joe Turner in his prime. The heart of the album may be the three live tracks from what one writer called "the performance of the year," at the Waterfront Blues Festival. "I"m the last of my kind," says David, and he"s got a point. From the back of a flatbed truck in Alabama, to night clubs and festival stages around the world, this man has been rockin" and shoutin" the blues since 1957.