It all started with a few minutes to kill and Eric Bibb's dusty kicks; the man needed a shine.

"I was just traveling through," says the singer/songwriter. "I was in the Columbus, Ohio airport and had time before my connecting flight to get my shoes shined." Bibb was drawn to an elderly gentleman at the shoe shine stand.

"He just had this really cool demeanor and I got to talking to him about his background. Told me he was from Louisiana, which I could see, kinda. And I thought to myself while I was sittin' there, ‘I'm gonna write a song about this man.'"

The Song "Dr. Shine" wound up on Bibb's latest Telarc release, Diamond Days.

Everybody's got a story. And in life's perpetual comedy, many go untold; not everyone's talking, not everyone knows how.

Bibb tells these stories. Not all of them are his own. Yet without his thoughtful troubadour treatment of folks who often get overlooked, a true reflection of our humanity might never emerge.

Some say Bibb is a bluesman. And though steeped in blues culture, his style of playing and his observations of life --- his and others --- is pure American folk and beyond.

"I certainly don't consider myself strictly a blues artist," he says. "But I've got a lot of exposure on acoustic blues stages and that's where you'll find me in record stores because I do carry on some of that tradition."

Bibb has been traveling the world with his guitar for the past three decades. He's been nominated twice for a W.C. Handy Award and has won the "Best Newcomer" title in the British Blues Awards.

So the blues knows Bibb is all right, But Bibb doesn't stop there.

"I'm a troubadour," he says. "I'm a singer/songwriter... a bluesy singer/songwriter. I love the blues, but you gotta find gospel or country elements, soul elements in all that music."

Bibb's soulful voice and gentle finger style hug the Delta, no doubt. But his chord structures are a little bolder; there's frequently a few more changes than what standard blues players use to get the hurt across.

"I'm using the musical language that was established decades ago," he says. "And I put my own spin on this wonderful music that's inspired me from that tradition."

The Bibb spin is the lyrics and the stories they paint.

"Blues is pretty first-person stuff," he says. "Lyric-wise it's about keeping it real; which means I can't pretend that I'm a knife-totin' hustler from Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1932, or a sharecropper from the Delta. Those are my heroes, but that wasn't my experience. That's not my story."

But Bibb is willing to share those stories, as they belong to everyone. He's even gone so far as to include the guitar chords along with the lyrics in the Diamond Days liner notes.

"I think songs are supposed to be shared," he says. "And they're not the exclusive property of even the writer. They kinda come from the same collective pool and we're just re-shuffling melodies."

The melodies perhaps, but the stories are what keeps both folk and blues music alive. It's what troubadours like Bibb do, after all.

"Yeah," Bibb says. "It's just the stuff of our lives. There're a whole lotta people out there that need to talk to some scribe. That's the real history, you know, of our country, and you hear through the experiences, through the eyes of working people. It's really a good way to get a flavor of what's really goin' on."

Eric Bibb plays Thursday, February 15, at The German House Theatre, 315 Gregory Street, 303-2234, at 8 p.m., $15-$18. He also plays Saturday, February 17, at Genesee Community College, 345-6814, at 7:30 p.m., $6.