t was something about a guy named Jake. This Jake character, it seems, hates to tour with the band that he manages. The name of the band wasn't given, but his age became a factor.

"He's like 26 or 27 I think," muses Shannon Curfman, the newly signed artist to Arista Records who is playing tonight at San Francisco's famous Slim's nightclub. Then in walks Mike, Shannon's manager. At six-foot-three, he looms tall and authoritative, but with that nice-guy demeanor from some country outback neighborhood. Maybe it's his stark blonde hair and goofy grin. Perhaps it's the white button-down shirt and tell-tale face that gives him away.

"Nope," he corrects his client, "he is 28. Yep, the youngest tour manager there is at the moment." Then he pauses to add "For a respectable band that is." This comes as the irony of the evening. Shannon Curfman, who plays a mean slide blues guitar and sings with audacity and seeming authority on her first major release, Loud Guitars, Big Suspicions, is all of 14 years old. It seems apparent that I am in the room with a standard teenage girl. With her ultra hip and thick Fluvog boots, skateboard company hooded sweatshirt and bottles of soda and water everywhere, she leans back on the brown naugahyde couch in the crowded dressing room as any 14-year-old would do if engaged in a rousing round of some video game. This time though, she has to field questions for a while and lets us in on the fact that she has done this many times before. Not so much with sighs of boredom or a Veruca Salt tantrum, but with the schoolhouse posture of "man, not again." So I decided to not ask her the obvious. We touched on our favorite Stevie Wonder album. Mr. Wonder being a major influence on her work.

"I don't know the name of it," Shannon ponders a bit with a roll of sushi. "But, like, its the one that's live. The double album." No one knows the name.

Mike enters again, busy with calls and pre-show crap. "Uh, Musicquarium I think."

"No," screams out a band member. "That one wasn't live." This went on for a while. We back-and-forth a bit on the double album mystery and my time was running out.

Shannon Curfman hails from Fargo, North Dakota and describes herself as a natural ham. In her parents house, she would put on shows which parlayed into an appearance in a local talent contest at seven. At 10 she learned basic guitar hooks taught by her grandmother that propelled her even further into the local scene spotlight, headlining coffeehouses and the like. Practicing hours upon hours with time allotted by her parents advocating home schooling, she eventually found herself on stage at the Fargo Blues Festival with virtuoso Jeff Healy. It was that experience that gave her the gumption to ask her parents if she could start a band and now, her she is: in a San Francisco nightclub filled with aging blues fans, giggly girls, ogling guys and random radio giveaway winners. If the folks in Fargo could see her now!

Which they can. Her first single, "True Friends," a steady beat blues/rock diddy, is all over popular radio stations and gaining more and more press and positive feedback with each day. Is it her talent? Maybe her age? With song lyrics like "Love is a jungle/The hunter is the game/If I love you would you love me just the same?" ("Love Me Like That") Curfman's music is a can of 'Eat Me' in the face of standard teen-fare ear syrup. Claiming writer's credit on seven of the 11 tracks on her debut, Shannon Curfman seems poised for the throne Bonnie Raitt molded.

"What's more fun than this? This is what I want to do with my life. It's cool being young and knowing what you want to do in life," she muses with authentic glee. Some have compared the fair siren to her male counterpart and co-contributor for solos and lyrics, Johnny Lang. His success seems to have ushered in a new era of kids slowing down on punk and metal intentions and leaning steadily towards the great Blues Star trophy down the hall. Curfman points out that Lang was a big influence and help with how and where she sprung into the shady limelight of the blues-rock circuit, but she is definitely in charge of her own destiny — with a little help of course.

"My mom used to work for the government," Shannon says with a grin, "but now she works for me." And there was mom, upstairs by the stage, selling T-shirts and posters with her offspring's image on them. Dad still works for the Dakota RailRoad, but puts in time for shows, promotions and schooling her on the road. Which brought us to the obvious question: What does a 14-year-old girl think about playing smoky clubs to people three times her age? She just kind of shrugged and relayed that it is all about the music and not the baggage that comes with it. Well, her next stop after SF is Reno, Nevada, and I would like to get her impression after dealing with drunk gamblers who actually flock there and engage in club-going when the one-armed bandits rob them blind.

Mike enters again. He tells Shannon she has 10 minutes and tells me that my time was up.

After we left the backstage area, I secured a place in back and watched her show carefully. The house filled up as she crossed the stage and delivered a set of inspired and authentic tunes to the curious, if not admiring, crowd. Which got me to thinking about something she said before going on.

"My songs are not photographs of my life at that time. I'd like to think they're about subjects and experiences people can relate to."

Relate to? At 14, I skateboarded, played Dungeons and Dragons and listened to Minor Threat. Now as I approach true adulthood, I still don't know what she is thinking about. I left the venue with blues in my heart.

Pick up Shannon Curfman's debut album, Loud Guitars, Big Suspicions (Arista) at fine record stores everywhere. And watch for the Shannon Curfman touring machine.

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