APP.COM: Rene Marie, Shannon McNally sing the blues in NJ

Choices, choices. We are so lucky to live where we do. Two women who sing blues well come to our area, in theater settings, one at 8 tonight south of Asbury Park and one at 8 Saturday night north of Asbury Park.

Virginia-raised singer-songwriter vocalist Rene Marie comes to the Grunin Center at Ocean County Community College in Toms River at 8 tonight. Saturday night at 8 p.m., Long Island-raised, Mississippi-based roots and blues singer-songwriter-guitarist Shannon McNally performs as part of the Split Level Concert Series at the Union County Performing Arts Center in Rahway. Both are compelling performers who know how to read an audience and how to pace a show.

Marie, who made her singing debut as a 42-year-old at Blues Alley in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., has been touring in support of her superb recording of Earth Kitt songs, “I Wanna Be Evil (With Love to Earth Kitt)” for New York City-based Motema Music, the hippest label in contemporary jazz.

“I Wanna Be Evil” was released in November and is Marie’s third album for Motema Music and her tenth album overall. Marie also has several critically-praised albums she released on the Kansas City-based MaxJazz label. She freely serves up an artful blend of blues tunes and jazz standards on most of her releases and at her live shows.

Tickets to tonight’s show at the Grunin Center at Ocean County Community College are $24 to $29. Call 732-255-0500 or visit www.grunincenter.org.

McNally, raised in Long Island with musically hip, supportive parents who were always playing blues, rock and folk albums around the house, began writing her own songs and playing guitar as a young teenager. She moved to New Orleans a year or two before Katrina struck then relocated to safer turf in the hill country of North Mississippi.

It took a little time in New Orleans, but she found acceptance in the Crescent City and her time in the Mississippi Hill Country has been marked by frequent collaborations with the Dickinson brothers of the North Mississippi All-Stars and their famous, sadly departed record producer father, Jim Dickinson, based in nearby Memphis for many years. McNally’s latest recording, “Small Town Talk,” also superb, is also a tribute to one of Louisiana’s greatest songwriters, the late Bobby Charles.

Aside from Dr. John and his former Lower 911 bandmates, other guests on “Small Town Talk” are good people: Derek Trucks, Vince Gill and Luther Dickinson.

In her two decades-long career, McNally has performed with a short who’s who of blues, rock and country music: Willie Nelson, Gill, John Mellencamp, Levon Helm, Dr. John, Trucks, Anders Osbourne, Luther and Cody Dickinson, Charlie Sexton and Rufus Wainwright among others.

Tickets are $20 and the concert takes place in the Loft at Union County Performing Arts Center, 1601 Irving St., Rahway. 732-499-8226 or www.ucpac.org.