The blues is alive and well some distance from the Katy Freeway's Kirkwood exit, behind Olde Towne Kolaches and next door to a florist. Otherwise a grubby if literary-minded neighborhood bar, the Shakespeare has for many years now reflected not some long-outdated idea of the blues but what the music looks and sounds like today: older, white, suburban. It's had some help, but the Shakespeare has nurtured a community of local musicians — including but not limited to JohnMcVey, Sonny Boy Terry, Sparetime Murray, Mojofromopolis, Steve Krase & the In Crowd and the Mighty Orq — who have gone a long way toward keeping Houston's scene fertile when in most other cities the blues is but a distant memory.