Since blues music by design doesn't pack many surprises -- you know, 12 bars, repeated first line, misery and horndog sentiments -- it's up to the clubgoer to come up with the variations. With an assortment of blues establishments and institutions in place in Phoenix for decades, it's hard to find a new blues hangout that's underground enough to spotlight new talents and yet doesn't feel like a beer palace that changes into a sports bar at the clang of a bell.

Monroe's has the underground part worked out -- can you recall the last club in the Valley that's a walk-down? We can't, either. Using this subterranean advantage, it's possible to slip in at happy hour and feel you're in a blues cellar in St. Louis where the 115-degree sun can't catch you crying in your beer. Monroe's has played host to bands like Hot Ice and Morgan City General, a blues duo from Iowa that plays there every Wednesday night, but to anyone whose introduction to the blues was the Robert Johnson boxed set, it's the romantic notion of a musician with one hell-hounded trail that brings people to Monroe's modest suds cellar.