Lawrence’s left-of-center music scene is booming.

Ani DiFranco sold out Liberty Hall a few weeks ago, as did Interpol.

Saul Williams played in town Sunday. Steve Earle will be here April 3.

Indeed, times are good. But for the city’s small-but-tireless band of blues lovers, pickings have been slim lately.

“We’re in a down cycle right now,” says Pat Nichols, a Lawrence attorney and longtime blues devotee. “It’ll go back up, eventually, because the appeal of the blues is eternal. Right now, what’s keeping the flame alive — in Lawrence, anyway — is Stu’s (Midtown Tavern).”

This flame will reach blow-torch proportions Friday when Malford Milligan, one of the biggest and brightest lights on the Austin, Texas, blues scene, plays Stu’s, 925 Iowa.

Milligan fronted Storyville — an all-star band that featured Stevie Ray Vaughan’s drummer and bassist, Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon, respectively, and ex-John Mellencamp guitarist David Grissom — for almost five years, during which the ensemble released a pair of CDs that prompted comparisons with Otis Redding.

A much in-demand singer, Milligan also can be heard on discs by Austin stalwarts Doyle Bramhall II, Marcia Ball, Hal Ketchum, Alejandro Escovedo, Chris Smither, Eric Johnson and Layton and Shannon’s Double Trouble.

A dynamic performer, he’s been on “Austin City Limits” three times — once with guitar whiz Johnson, once with Storyville, once with Double Trouble.

Blues singer Malford Milligan has become a staple of the Austin music scene, performing with artists such as Storyville and Eric Johnson.

Now, he has put together a seven-piece band for some nonstop touring.

“It’s working out real well,” Milligan says during a telephone interview from his studio in Austin. “I love being on the road.”

For an albino black blues singer, Milligan’s story is remarkably staid. After flunking out at Texas Tech University, he moved to Austin in 1981 in hopes of starting over at the University of Texas.

“What happened was I just started singing out of nowhere — no churches, no car washes, just me doing my thing — and that was the end of that,” he says, laughing.

He soon became a regular participant in the now-famous Monday blues jams at Antone’s blues club.

After a couple critically acclaimed but low-selling solo albums, he fell into Storyville.

“Chris, Tommy and David had played on ‘Bluest Eyes’ (solo album) with me, so we all knew each other,” Mulligan says. “Chris and Tommy had just left The Arc Angels and wanted to put a band together, so it all made sense.”

Though Storyville’s CDs each sold a few hundred thousand units, the band struggled to crack what Milligan calls the “national thing.”

“It was a great band,” he says. “It still is.”

So why the breakup?

Malford Milligan.

“It’s like any relationship,” Milligan replies. “It’s never just one thing, it was a lot of things. But for me, it was such a positive experience. It made me a better songwriter; it grounded me.”

That grounding, he says, includes heavy doses of the “Muddy Waters blues stuff” and the sweet, raucous soul of Al Green, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding and Bobby “Blue” Bland.

Nichols plans on being at Stu’s Friday.

“I want to hear him,” Nichols says. “And I really looking forward to hearing some blues without all the cigarette smoke.”