Bayport BBQ, the deep blues juke joint not far from the St. Croix River, is in the midst of its four-year anniversary celebration, and true to form, the acts are all over the place genre-wise but uniformly good, too.

Club owner Chris Johnson does your work for you if you are a music fan on the lookout for new outsider sounds of the rootsy, rough-edged variety.

"I don't care whether it's blues infused with punk or with rock or bluegrass or folk — no matter what they do with it — if it moves me, I like it," he said of the performers he books — some of whom travel from overseas to play in Bayport.

This weekend, Johnson is out of town, so his barbecue joint's multiweek anniversary run is on brief hiatus. Potentially concerning, however, is the word he shared by e-mail this week about a possible scaling back of live music in the year ahead.

"Are we too far out of the [Twin] Cities to draw audiences?" he said. "Should we be doing something differently? Should we continue doing music at all?"

Two months ago, Bayport BBQ was featured in a Star Tribune story that also previewed a show there by the Memphis guitarist John Paul Keith. He records for Big Legal Mess, a label that can thank Johnson for much of the exposure it enjoys locally. This week, Keith likened the gig to playing in someone's home.

"We were made to feel so welcome, and everyone there was so attentive and appreciative, it had the feel of a private audience," he said. "We loved playing there."

The BBQ anniversary shows resume on Oct. 26 with an appearance by Lonesome Shack, a gritty boogie-blues trio from Seattle. Reverend Deadeye and Possessed by Paul James are on deck in November. E-mail bayportbbq@comcast.net for tickets.

Johnson notes that the lineup includes artists who've played before in Bayport and at festivals he's organized. And that explains his absence this weekend. He is at a festival in Clarksdale, Miss., deep again in the blues.