Tab Benoit, whose latest record is Night Train to Nashville, plays at Chan’s, in Woonsocket, at 8 and 10 tonight.

Since 1992, Tab Benoit has put out 15 albums of blues and roots-rock music with the sound of his native Louisiana. Not the silky, urban sounds of piano players such as Professor Longhair or Dr. John; more like the gutbucket rural sound of the outlying areas. And people have noticed: He’s been named Contemporary Blues Male Performer of the Year by The Blues Foundation two years in a row and been nominated for a Grammy Award.

Ask him about that, though, and he’ll tell you that his popularity is the result of old-fashioned hard work. He tours 250 to 300 nights a year, wherever he can get to — if it seems as though he was just at Chan’s a few weeks ago, it’s because he was.

“I’ve been traveling a lot since I started this. It’s what I do, the way to keep it going. I think it has a lot to do with awards, too. People see you and they know what you’re about, and they pull for you.”

If you’re going to be on the road, Benoit reasons, might as well do it right and play over and over and over again. Playing is “why I’m out here,” he says.

He calls Chan’s “a fun place. A lot of the show ends up being comedy, too. They have a great sense of humor and they egg me on.” Benoit says he did some standup when he was young, and there are running jokes in his live show. “It’s kind of fun to have a place where you can go back to some of those things.”

Benoit’s latest record is Night Train to Nashville, his third live album. This one has The Fabulous Thunderbirds’ Kim Wilson and Wet Willie’s Jimmy Hall as guests; Jimmy Thackery was on his previous live effort, as part of the Whiskey Store project.

Benoit says there’s no particular appeal to live records, though. “All the records are live, whether they’re in a studio or not. The only difference is whether there’s people there. . . . It’s a way to document that part of my musical life and have it forever.” The main difference with a live record is the special guests: “The guys who were on [them] were legendary. So it’s a snapshot from a photo album, in music.”

Benoit and his music were featured in the movie Hurricane on the Bayou, but the subject was nothing new to him. Benoit, a native of Houma, La., about 50 miles from New Orleans, helped start the Voice of the Wetlands Foundation in 2003 to spread the word that the Mississippi River was being treated in such a way that Louisiana was extremely vulnerable to a major hurricane.

Uh-huh.

“The Mississippi doesn’t feed the Delta anymore,” Benoit explains, and that means that the Delta is not only drying up but exposing inland areas to salt water, which kills vegetation and erodes the land. And this, he says, was before Katrina and Rita. Now, he claims, Louisiana is losing a football field’s worth of land every half-hour.

“There’s no real priority to change that, or to fix what’s broke. It’s a huge battle to get our priorities straight. It’s a national thing; it’s not a local or a statewide thing. What the nation relies on us for is dying and washing away.”

The biggest port in the country is in New Orleans, Benoit says — the fifth-biggest port system in the world — as well as 40 percent of the nation’s oil refineries. “And no one’s talking about moving it, and no one’s talking about fixing it. It’s dying. . . .

“We don’t have seafood anymore; we don’t have sugar anymore. The nation’s first heart transplant was done in New Orleans; we had a huge medical industry. The hospitals are going. . . . All I see is people leaving and oil [exploration] moving in. So it looks like we’re sacrificing the coast of Louisiana for oil.”

Benoit will speak to a congressional committee this week on the subject for the first time. He’s spoken to congressmen individually before, and says, “I’ve had to get political. I didn’t want to be political, but politics is what’s keeping us from fixing the problems that we have. So you kind of get forced into it. . . .

“What’s happening where we are is an example of what happens when you don’t stand up and tell the federal government what’s important to you. . . . Have you tried to contact these guys? Their numbers and their e-mail addresses are all available.”

The number of people displaced from the city is like a diaspora, and it falls to the musicians to keep the region and its challenges in the spotlight, Benoit says. “We have to be. We’re all that’s left. And that’s barely hanging on. New Orleans can’t survive like this. New Orleans is basically surviving off Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest [The Jazz and Heritage Festival]. You go there during the week and Bourbon Street’s got some people and that’s it. People aren’t investing in that city because it’s obviously unsafe the way it is.”

Benoit says that the levees surrounding New Orleans have only been patched in the areas where they collapsed; they haven’t been reinforced.

“Every Mardi Gras could be the last one. Every Jazz Fest could be the last one. Every day could be the last day in New Orleans. It’s that close to the edge. And people need to understand that, and make a decision: What are we going to do as a nation? Because we haven’t taken care of the people, and we haven’t taken care of the problem. All we’ve done is worry about this other country overseas. . . .

“If we can’t take care of ourselves, how can we take care of another country, and show the world and teach them to be like us? I don’t want to teach them to be like us right now, not until we get our [stuff] together.”

Tab Benoit plays the second of a two-night stand at Chan’s, 267 Main St., Woonsocket, tonight. Tickets are $25 for the 8 p.m. show, $20 for the 10 p.m. show and $30 for both. Call (401) 765-1900.

The Complaints — free!

Speaking of hard-working groups, our local boys The Complaints have been at it somewhere pretty much every night for more than a decade now, and their latest disc, Sunday Morning Radio, is a winning collection of tough, smart and tuneful rock (not surprisingly, if you know the band’s oeuvre; it’s got two songs inspired by Journal reporter Mike Stanton’s book The Prince of Providence). They celebrate its release Sunday night at The Hi-Hat, 3 Davol Square, Providence. It’s at 6 and it’s free! Call (401) 453-6500.

rmassimo@projo.com