When music is in your blood, it never quite works its way out.

T. Mitchell Bell spent a good bit of the '90s riding the initial wave of the Internet, putting his computer skills to work for organizations like amazon.com in Seattle. At that point, his musical aspirations kind of took a back seat.

"I was still playing and writing, but I wasn't playing out that much," he says.

Now that he's back in the Pittsburgh area and settled in Washington, he's getting back to his roots - in more ways that one - and performing on acoustic guitar, drawing from his large repertoire of originals.

His roots are in music: His dad, Tom Bell, is a drummer who played with the likes of Tony Janflone Sr. when Mitch was young. As such, he always has been around music and received plenty of encouragement from his father when Mitch decided he'd give playing and singing a try, too.

And Mitch's music is in the roots: That's how he describes his style, which draws influence from artists like Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder, Bob Dylan and James Taylor.

Mitch got his start musically on a rootsy instrument. "My dad turned me on to a harmonica book when I was about 12 years old," an instructional manual by legendary blues harp player Tony Glover.

He also was a singer and performed in his first band while he was in high school, "doing Neil Young and Robin Trower covers." But that was during the latter part of the '70s, when people weren't particularly interested in listening to good music. So to get work, "We started learning a bunch of disco tunes."

To their credit, "We still worked in some interesting stuff, like Parliament and the Isley Brothers." But, still ...

Mitch saw the light a little whie later and picked up the acoustic guitar, learning material from the '70s singer-songwriter genre while listening to jazz players such as Larry Coryell and Al DiMeola. And a big influence on him at that time was Steve Forbert - whose style in turn led him to discover the treasure trove of material that is Dylan.

He continued to play in bands during the '80s before settling on another course.

"It was probably the early '90s that I got into the coffeehouse singer-songwriter thing." He performed at places like the Beehive, probably the first coffeehouse in Pittsburgh, and did a live broadcast on WYEP-FM in 1994. Meanwhile, as the Internet started coming into public consciousness, he put his computer skills to work on promoting artists like the Gathering Field.

From there, he went full-fledged into computer work, but now he has a bit more time to pursue his musical interests. He has a home recording studio and has put together a collection of his originals, simply called "t. mitchell bell."

The tunes have interesting sources of inspiration. Mitch wrote "Bloody Angle," for example, about his great-great-great grandfather, who was killed at Spotsylvania Courthouse during the Civil War. And the song "Simple" was inspired by words of wisdom on a bumper sticker: "Live simply, so others can simply live."

Mitch also has put together a Web site, acousticSongs.com, that helps call attention to acoustically oriented artists.

You can catch Mitch Bell at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Cafe Bean, 31 E. Wheeling St., Washington (right across the street from the newspaper office). Plans call for him to perform there on a monthly basis, and he's looking to put together an open stage type of deal for local musicians.

After all, there are plenty of other folks who like to get back to their roots, too.