With a CD or a concert for a canvas, the best musicians paint pictures through their songs.

Despite the fact that their art is rooted in sound, these musicians — with or without lyrics as an aid — give their listeners a sight. It's a difficult task, but it's by no means impossible.

Bluesman T-Model Ford, who performs Sept. 11 at the Saloon, 101 Hiester St., is one of those artists who can pull this off. Backed by one-chord guitar strumming and skeletal drumming, T-Model tells tales of life on the Mississippi Delta that are positively picturesque.

One can see tall grass blowing in the Mississippi wind and a crumbling porch on the house on T-Model's farm, where he sat and learned to play after his wife left him 20 years ago. A closer look reveals the dilapidated juke-joint where T-Model fine tuned his works before taking them around the world once he signed to blues label Fat Possum.

But the 79-year-old one-ups his fellow musicians who know how to "paint" because T-Model can give his listeners something in addition to sound and vision, something no one else can do.

Unlike other artists, T-Model gives his songs a smell. In February 1998, T-Model brought that scent to State College for the first time, filling the HUB cellar with the fragrances of freshly-plowed fields, Southern-cooked meals and spilled whiskey and gin. And the aroma of the fruits and vegetables grown on T-Model's farm, and throughout the Delta, was unavoidable.

Inexplicably, his words and music combined to send wafts of those scents throughout the cellar and dancing through the crowd. It was almost impossible for someone to walk away from the show without those odors tickling his or her nose. T-Model opened that gig for Fat Possum labelmate R.L. Burnside and arguably stole the show, despite Burnside's star status.

Banging away wildly on his guitar in his own self-taught style, T-Model flooded the HUB with noise that was ear piercing and cacophonous and yet at the same time downright blissful. His music captured the attention of everyone in attendance and his playful between-song banter and taunts with his crutch helped to liven up his audience as well.

With vivid lyrics describing a life fraught with turmoil and a sound and style that epitomize one-chord blues, T-Model brought the Delta to life through the senses of his crowd.

Now T-Model Ford returns to Penn State as part of the Mississippi Fat Possum JukeJoint Caravan. Labelmates Paul Jones and Robert Belfour will open the show, with T-Model closing out the night with songs from all three of his albums, including this year's "She Ain't None of Your'n."

Blues fans would be wise to be in attendance, as only T-Model can give them the sounds, sights and scents of the Mississippi Delta.