I started taking piano at age 5. That was in the 1840s, when teachers charged crazy stuff like 50 cents an hour and when $27 for a new set of genuine ivory key covers was considered highway robbery. By the time I quit, lessons were more in the $5 range, and ivorine (a synthetic ivory) was all the rage among piano makers, who hailed the invention as a modern miracle. Not only was it incredibly cheaper; the material wasn’t vulnerable to yellowing and changes in humidity. (To this day, show me a piece of ivorine with so much as a spot of discoloration, and I’ll show you my brand-new fleet of fishing boats off the Kansas coast.) San Diego native and R&B envoy Tommy Redding is way too young to remember real ivory and dirt-cheap music lessons. That means he’s also proof of the obvious–that unlike real ivory and dirt-cheap music lessons, talent and a knack for nuance endure, just like they did for the great Otis Redding, Tommy’s third cousin. Don’t let the overused monikers or vocal gigs on video games fool you–Redding has a definitive style, with a thrift of voice and innocence of persona that transcend the hustle and bustle and hype marking so many careers these days. A spot on KUSI-TV revealed him for what he is. He regaled viewers with something called “All of the Above,” a love ballad made all the more disarming amid his sartorials (tennies and run-of-the-mill street clothes). His encore (for which he played self-taught guitar left-handed) suggests that if your date opens your car door, “There’s a good chance he’s a good man.” There’s an overtaking sweetness to all this—indeed, Redding himself is that good man, an ingenuous, gentle soul whose plaintive longings rival the depth of his heart. On Tuesday, Sept. 1 at 10 p.m., Redding will turn a few of his 20-some songs at The Office tavern, 3936 30th St. in North Park. Presumably, one of the entries will be “Hey Ladies,” featuring Grammy-nominated rapper Yung Joc. And it’d be nice to hear “All of the Above” again, with Redding’s earnest facial expressions as backdrop. In any event, it’s a cinch Redding’s gaining ground in the trade. Representation by North Park’s scrappy Precise Media and its client’s own fresh-voiced inner truth are a tough combination to beat. An artist’s life may have been a lot less hectic in the 1840s (I know for a fact it was), and that’s why there’s so much to like about Tommy Redding. His down-to-earth bearing illustrates his rough-and-tumble genre’s thoughtful side, even as today’s piano lessons are priced at the equivalent of a second mortgage.