What is it about the blues, anyway? How can you feel so good singing about feelin' so bad, about losin' your baby, about how you miss that evil, lyin' woman even if she done you wrong, spent all your money, cheated on you with your best friend and treated you like dirt, after all you done for her? That's the Blues Paradox: Sing about evil, sing about injustice, sing about infidelity and dishonesty and ruination - and you feel good all over. Play the blues to beat the devil; sing it, feel it, stomp it right out of your system. You don't have to do it alone: Help is at hand in the form of the Krypton City Blues Revue.

Bands come and go, and so do places to play, but the blues goes on forever. At 11 years and counting, KCBR is among the more venerable of central Pa. musical entities. The band began as an acoustic duo, just Mitch Ivanoff and Ron Meinsler, named in honor of Three Mile Island. They played places like The Grey Dog and Smokin' Jake's in Lancaster. Both venues are gone and so is Ron, but Ivanoff and company - now a full-fledged, five-piece electric band - just keep pickin' 'em up and layin' 'em down.

Over the years, at least 10 members have come and gone. The current incarnation includes Ivanoff on lead guitar and vocals, Dale Wise on drums, Trent Peechatka on piano and vocals, Pete Netznik on bass and vocals, and Nate Myers on harmonica and vocals.

My lady friend and I caught up with the Kryptonites at the perfect blues venue, KClinger's Tavern in Hanover. Ivanoff and company were clearly among friends, judging by the long, loud applause after and during the songs, and by the number of people singing along on "She Wasn't Mine to Begin With" - a cut from their third and latest CD, Tales from Cipletown. The late June night was steaming hot outside, sweltering inside. Even Ivanoff, presumably inured to heat after 30 years at Bethlehem Steel, needed some of the comparatively cooler outside air. Between sets, we sat on his truck's tailgate for an interview punctuated by visiting friends, fans, and assorted well-wishers.

Ivanoff was lavish in his praise of KClinger's. "We really love it here," he said. "It's what real blues places should be, where you feel more like you're at a party than in a bar."

If you were to shake Ivanoff's hand, you'd probably wonder, as I did, How the hell does he pick? Understand, this is one massive sonofagun, with huge hands and thick fingers. How do those big digits navigate a fretboard? But pick he does, and very well, thank you. Ivanoff can make that guitar soar, make it cry; he can make it sing, plaintive and melodic, and he can plunge from sweet and high right on down to raw and raunchy, riding a tortured chord straight into the gutter - gut-ripping, down 'n dirty, mud-wrestling with the kind of emotions that only the blues can give voice to. He plays a mean slide guitar, too, draping the air with big swooping bell-clear chords. KCBR has a loyal local following: this is local blues performed by and among friends, music the audience identifies with. There was a lot of high-fiving, a lot of back-slapping, a lot of hugging and catching up. The blues is personal. The blues is something you share with people who have lived it and felt it just like you have.

The local touch isn't restricted to live performances. Tales From Cipletown is "all original material," Ivanoff said, and named for "an old neighborhood in Harrisburg where I was raised - my family home. It was a very ethnically diverse neighborhood, but it's pretty much gone. There's nothing left but the projects."

One cut, "Murder Down in Cipletown," is plucked straight from real life: It's about last year's scandal, the hit-and-run death involving a state representative who ran over Kenneth Cains, and is said to have fled the scene and lied about it, claiming first that his car was damaged on the Turnpike, then that he thought he'd hit a sign. Ivanoff says the song is "about thevalue of human life, and about how things get twisted around."

But the live scene is as personal as it gets. Ivanoff's old friend, 78-year-old Bill Carlisle, came up from the audience to play a little stride piano. Stride, a form perfected by the likes of Jelly Roll Morton, almost demands that your body move along with it. Pianist Peechatka willingly gave up the bench to Carlisle, whom he called "a mentor of mine." Bill played the keyboard and the audience, feeding off the vibe and the love of the crowd, letting his fingers do the walking. Bill's legs were unsteady, but the fingers still knew their way around. After two songs he turned the ivories back over to Peechatka, telling the band and the audience, "Thank you for keeping me alive!"

Peechatka's specialty is more like what a friend of mine admiringly calls "whorehouse piano," an infectious honky-tonk sound, kind of like Little Feat at their best. Wise and Netznik lay down a solid foundation for Ivanoff, Myers, and Peechatka's interwoven leads. This is one of those bands ... well, the CD's very good, but they really do sound better when they're right there in front of you, live.

Myers has been stepping out of late fronting his own band, Nate Myers and the Aces. Wise toured with Big Jack Johnson and the Oilers, and appears on their Roots Stew CD, which was nominated for a W.C. Handy award. KClinger's doesn't really have a dance floor, but that little technicality can't stop someone who's determined to boogie. Only a few actually got up and danced in the usual sense, but there was a lot of chair dancing, foot-tapping, head- nodding, and duck-walking on the way to the bar or the bathroom. Ivanoff was wailing, Ivanoff was moaning. Ivanoff's baby be spendin' all his money on whiskey, beer, and wine, and he's goin' out his mind. Yass. As the evening wore on there were more folks who couldn't stop themselves any more, and just had to get up and shake it around at the back of the room. The band's playlist is a mix of originals and classics. "We do a lot of covers," Ivanoff said, "but we have enough originals to do half the night if we want to."

Ivanoff's love of the music is unmistakable. A student of his chosen artform, he knows the names, the history, the styles, the genealogy of who's played with whom and who their influences were. "We do as many styles of blues as we possibly can," the big man told me. "The band's flexible enough that we don't have to lock ourselves into any one thing." But the Krypton sound is anchored in "that Mississippi-Chicago connection. Delta blues are the deepest kind of blues, and the closest to our hearts."

Ivanoff rattled off names like Booker White, Tommy Johnson, Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell, Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, Son House, as well as more familiar names like Muddy Waters, whom he calls "in the middle," the voice that legitimized electric blues. Southern blacks who took the train to Chicago found in Muddy "the guy who could play that music they remembered from down home."

No stranger to other musical styles, Ivanoff also admires jazz great Django Reinhardt, hot Euro swing, and the Squirrel Nut Zippers. At KClinger's, he says the owners have "true love and reverence for the music." The hallway leading to the bathroom is lined with autographed glossies of acts that have come through. Said Ivanoff, "Musicians coming off the road know KClinger's as a place where they'll be treated with the fullest respect."

The ultimate blues song has yet to be written. It would have a lot in common with the ultimate Country Western song - cheatin' hearts, good women and no-good men and vice-versa, rain, being far from home and lonesome, marking time in the county jail, maybe throw in a pawn shop, some cheap whiskey, and a dee-dee-dee and a da-da-da and whatever the hell else you want in there. The ultimate blues song would have anguished wailing harmonica and a whole chain of pissed-off scorching guitar hooks, and it would be about as long as "Gone With the Wind," with an intermission, to accommodate a lifetime of broken hearts and joyful reconciliations. And when you played it, people would dance themselves to death, loving it every step of the way. That's the blues. The only way to lose them is to embrace them. And a guy the size of Ivanoff can wrap himself around a mess of 'em.