“Have Blues, Will Travel.”

That’s not just the title of the new album by Smokin’ Joe Kubek and Bnois King, released in late May. It’s also been their work ethic for more than 20 years.

Since 1989, this supremely talented Texas-based guitar duo, and their backing band, have been barnstorming the blues circuit and rousing the rabble with their distinctive, butt-rockin' mix of blues, rock and jazz.

They’re such committed road dogs at this point that Kubek says it’s not unusual for the band to do 14 shows in 16 days, before taking just a few days of down time before hitting the road and doing it all over again.

“That’s pretty much the norm for us,” says Kubek. “We figure it’s just a privilege to play your music for people in a live setting, so our attitude is that we just gotta get out there and do it.”

Kubek and King will come to Guy Hollerin’s on Friday for what is sure to be a rip-snorting blues rock blowout.

In the last 20 years or so, there’s been no shortage of rocking-blues players and bands to come out of Texas. But what sets King and Kubek apart from many of them is the interplay between Kubek’s searing, scorched-earth riffs and solos, and King’s nimble, jazzy runs.

While Kubek is smokin’ on his guitar, King lays down a thick rhythm guitar groove, and when it’s King’s turn to solo, he finds something new by unspooling a melodic, bluesy, jazz-rock fusion.

They complement each other in other ways as well. King is the band’s singer, and his Texas soul vocal style is alternately gritty and silky, sometimes even recalling B.B. King’s yearning vocals. He also writes the lyrics.

Listen to a selection of songs by Smokin' Joe Kubek & Bnois King:

“What generally happens is that I’ll come up with a musical idea, and we’ll bat that around, and then Bnois will give me an idea for the groove, then we take it from there,” says Kubek during an interview from his home in Dallas. “But I don’t mess around with the lyrics. That’s Bnois’s department.” (And that’s pronounced Buh-noice.)

“Have Blues, Will Travel” is their second album for the Chicago-based Alligator label, following “Blood Brothers,” which was released in ’08. That was after five years on the Blind Pig label. “Blood Brothers” won Kubek and King a larger following, partly because Alligator is a larger operation, with more marketing muscle.

“Have Blues, Will Travel” is an exciting synergy of brawny blues rock, seductive shuffles, simmering slow blues and bluesy ballads. The muscular, over-amped, rocking blues workouts, like the title track, plus “Out of Body, Out of Mind,” “One Step at a Time,” and “A Sight to See,” recall the distorto-serrated guitars and chugging grooves of mid-‘70s ZZ Top — back before that band lost its way by loading up on synth beats and processed guitars, and becoming cartoon characters.

Kubek grew up in the Dallas area, and was a teenager during that mid-‘70s era, so “I’m sure those guys had a subconscious influence on how I developed my own style,” says Kubek.

“One thing Bnois and I wanted to do on this album was challenge ourselves a little, and go into some new territory, both in terms of the music and the lyrics,” he says. Specifically, they did more bluesy ballads than in the past, like the slow-burning but still intense “Wishful Thinking,” for example. “We wanted to do some things that took more work for us to pull off, and I think we succeeded in that.”

Kubek began his career gigging in clubs around Dallas when he was just 14. He got into the blues early, but like many of his generation, that education was initially via the British blues players like Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Then, as with many of his peers, he soon found his way back to the source: Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Albert King, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Freddie King, etc.

By the time he was 19, he was backing many of these blues giants in the Texas clubs. In fact, in 1976, he was ready to go out on tour with Freddie King when King suddenly died of a heart attack.

“I learned a lot from Freddie,” says Kubek. “He was always throwing everything he could into it. He would put his whole body and soul into the music, and he would always hit the stage with a bang, tearing it up from the first second he began to play.”

Bnois King, now 67, a native of Delhi, Louisiana, toured the southwest through most of the ‘70s, and made his way to Dallas in ’79. He gigged with local jazz combos until he met Kubek in ’89. Although King has a talent for drawing listeners in with the storytelling quality of songs, he didn’t begin writing until he and Kubek formed a band together. “We needed songs, so I wrote about things that happened to me, to people I knew,” says King in the Alligator bio sheet that accompanied “Have Blues, Will Travel.” “That’s what I still do today.” When Kubek and King first began playing together, they never dreamed they would create the kind of fluid, intuitive guitar interplay they’ve developed. “Naw, because of our different backgrounds, we didn’t think it would work,” says Kubek.

“And I’m not even sure I can explain why it does, but almost from the beginning, we just felt comfortable together. And whether we were onstage or in the studio, we began nudging each other. Even today, every night we’re onstage, we love to pull new things out of each other, and try to give each other a challenge.”

Kevin Ransom is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.