The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Ryan Montbleau's shoes may need a shine, but that's a tough thing to do when you're a travellin' man. Montbleau and his band play an average of 200 shows a year, bringing their eclectically influenced soul across the country and back again on a nocturnal circuit only the hardest working bands feel compelled to journey.

Perched on a stool, tapping a foot wildly to the beat, Montbleau seems poised and natural in this setting. Performing didn't come about so comfortably from the start, however.

"For me to cross that threshold, I was really nervous at first and I kind of didn't want to, but I knew I had to for some reason," Montbleau says. "So you just keep forcing yourself to get up there. Now being on stage makes more sense to me than anything else."

His strength came from a source terrifying to any normal adult: a classroom of teenagers.

"I used to teach for a little while. I was a substitute teacher. If you can face a class full of high school kids at seven in the morning..." Montbleau erupts into laughter. "I was scared shitless. That helped me to be able to face a crowd."

Montbleau is the male equivalent to Fiona Apple. He sings stark, emotional tales that leave listeners laughing or dancing or standing rigid, lost in personal reflection. He also has this amazing ability to turn "love" into a five syllable word, partly due to his R&B-soaked vocals.

Montbleau's musical inspirations are all over the map. Growing up he listened to as much of fellow Bostonians, New Edition, as he did AC/DC.

"They kind of just blended," he says. "I got some of my vocal stuff from this cheesy R&B stuff growing up. I'm not ashamed of it. Some of that led me into Sam Cooke and Stevie Wonder."

In addition to R&B, elements of blues, jazz, and pop reflect in his music. Visually, the band is overtly American, with an appropriately nerdy-looking key boardist and a viola player wearing a baseball cap. Musically, the band also has a strong national influence, with rhythms at times delightfully bordering on rag time and a strong focus on folksy story-telling.

One such story-telling highlight comes in "Quickie," a very an honest and dangerously heartbreaking tale of, well, a quickie. Old couples and ones meeting for the first time filled the floor with slow-dancing, before returning to their bopping and beer drinking during Montbleau's more lively numbers, such as "City," with its thumping guitars and beaten-to-death bongos. "75 and Sunny" is unabashedly cheery with lyrics like "You better believe I'm living for the moment/ but my moment's growing bigger by and by."

Montbleau is open and unassuming onstage. He leaves any rock and roll posturings to the front men with egos twice the size of their Telecasters. But, breaking down those barriers has left him sometimes clouded with misconceptions.

"People get all kinds of funny ideas when they see you up onstage," he says. "I try to be very open and honest and revealing with my lyrics. So people from that might think they've got a complete picture of who I am and attach their own expectations to that. And some people approach me as if I'm going to be a total dick or something, and I really try not to be. I try to be cool with everyone. But people kind of brace themselves. They assume I'm one way and that's it."

On both sides of the curtain, Montbleau is pleasant and charming. It seems it would take quite a statement to get him riled up. An easy way is to start in with the comparisons. Call him the new Paul Simon. Call him a Beatles junkie. Just don't say he's like Dave Matthews.

"I really believe in my heart of hearts that we don't sound like that. We're certainly not trying to," he says.

With the band's fiddle and viola and rambling keys, it could be easy on face value to put the Ryan Montbleau Band in the same box as the jam rockers. Only, Montbleau has more heart than could fill any of Matthews' arenas. But if he has to be in a box, you can be sure he will open a door and invite you in.