"Bottom of the Bottle Blues" is not the kind of record Angel Blue would ordinarily set out to make.

Or even listen to.

Angel Blue says she likes the blues and likes to dance. Angel Blue and The Prophets Band Where: Hard Rock Cafe, Station Square. When: 7 p.m. Sunday. With: Smokin' Joe Rossi, Greg Iskat. Admission: $6.

But when The Blues Society of Western Pennsylvania suggested her making a record to play up the bluesier side of what she does, the bandleader threw herself into the challenge, studying records by the likes of Muddy Waters, B.B. King and Robert Johnson.

"I had heard them," she says. "But to hear them and enjoy them as a listener is different than studying them as a writer. Though they're known primarily for their musicianship, I was looking at the simplicity of the words. That's what blues is. It cuts to the chase. You don't have complex meanings. It's pretty much in your face. So I just started to put myself in that mind-set."

Where she soon discovered that, for her at least, it's easier to write a rock song than a blues song.

"A lot of stuff I do leans more toward Grateful Dead-ish party songs," she says, "like 'Trippin' With the Monkey.' It's a big long story about Timothy Leary's lab monkey escaping. And he ends up at my backyard party where he takes us on a trip. Then, he reveals who he is at the end of the song. That gets a really good response."

Her next CD, she says, will be closer to what she and the Prophets Band would ordinarily do at shows.

"I like the blues," she says. "Believe me. I don't want people to think I don't like my CD. But I also like that psychedelic era. And I like the feel of R&B and funk. My next CD is going to reflect all that. I like to dance."

She gets that from her mom, a former go-go dancer who inspired the rollicking R&B of "Shimmy Shakin' Lowdown Blues."

"She used to be a dancer in one of those cages," she says. "I mean, she didn't take her clothes off. She wore a bikini and used to win competitions. But she married young and had me when she was 19. There was always music in the house, and she used to shimmy. I never forgot the way she danced. I used to tell my friends 'My mom, she shimmies and she shakes.' So I wrote that for her. And all those words are true. I showed the shimmy shake to all my friends at school and they all started to dance like me."

The CD also features lead guitar by local metal hero Reb Beach, formerly of Winger.

"We put some of the CD together at Beacon Hill Studios," Blue says. "And Reb happened to come into the studio when the producer was working on our music. I don't know how it went down but he heard it and said, 'I'm gonna lay down some guitar.' And we were like 'All right, let's put it on there.' He's so good. Oh my gosh. As a matter of fact, he's gotten up on stage with me and I've almost forgotten to come in on my next line just watching him."