Photo courtesy of Alligator Records

Music came naturally for Michael Burks. As a child, he says he learned guitar, drums, bass, saxophone and organ.

Blues music and food go together. One would have a time figuring out how many blues festivals also celebrate some sort of edible.

Multiple Blues Music Award-nominated guitarist, singer and songwriter Michael Burks can offer both.

Burks, who brings his band to the Coffee Pot Roadhouse on Saturday, has been playing guitar since he was 2. His father, Frederick, a bass player who backed up traveling blues players coming through Milwaukee, got his son a tiny guitar.

Before long, young Michael was learning chords and scales. Later, he learned the guitar parts for every 45-RPM record his father handed him — in exchange for a dollar per song.

"It came pretty naturally for some reason," Burks said of growing up in Milwaukee in the late 1950s and 1960s. "I never did have any trouble learning the guitar [and] everything he put in front of me, not only guitar. I played drums, played bass, played saxophone and organ. ... It was never a big deal."

Cooking came to him in the 1970s and 1980s, after the family moved back to Frederick's native Arkansas. He had injured his hand in a work accident and could not play. Instead, the family opened its own blues joint in the Little Rock area.

Michael Burks fronted the house band, singing and wailing on guitar. But he was also involved in practically every other aspect of the business, he said. Being around the kitchen and a lot of chefs, cooking "just kind of rubbed off" on him, he said.

His specialty: greens. He makes sure they're picked after the first frost — that way, they are tender and easier to cook. But greens aren't all that's going in that pot, he said.

"The next thing is the bacon. I put plenty of meat. I like meat in my greens. Every time you take a bite of greens, you get a bite of meat. That flavor, the meat in there, man, is killer. Just eating a bowl of my greens is a meal on its own. A bowl of greens and a piece of hot water cornbread, and you're in the house," he said with a big laugh.

New disc, good feelings

Burks' latest album, "Iron Man" (Alligator), has been out since 2008. But he has recently finished recording another disc for Alligator, due about April. He said he and his band will be playing some of the new stuff while dipping back into a four-album history that dates to 1999.

The disc, which he co-produced along with Alligator label founder and owner Bruce Iglauer, will include at least four of Burks' originals and will be packed with old-school blues and blues-rock — "just a little something on there for everybody," he said.

And that includes making sure the folks who come in leave with a good feeling, he said. That was another lesson he learned at his family's blues joint.

"When you're on that stage and you make people feel good, you make people happy, you talk to them, you make them feel like they're not only a part of you, they're a part of that show."