The stage is set for a series of confrontations when photographer Mark Jefferson (Tom Eplin) agrees to help his friend Roger (John Mayall) defend his night club against a handful of organized crime figures. Mark has an added incentive for becoming involved as his ex-girlfriend Carol (Cheri Cameron Newell) sings at the club. But the gangsters are willing to use mayhem and murder in order to take over Roger's business. It appears that the petty mobsters are out to sell illegal weapons to anyone who wants them, especially L.A.'s youth, instead of using the club as a front for a prostitution ring as Roger suspects. Soon Mark and his trusty motorcycle have their work cut out for them.

Wim Wenders looks at the dramatic tension in the blues between the sacred and the profane by exploring the music and lives of three of his favorite blues artists: Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J. B. Lenoir. Part history, part personal pilgrimage, the film tells the story of these lives in music through an extended fictional film sequence (recreations of '20s and '30s events - shot in silent-film, hand-crank style), rare archival footage, present-day documentary scenes and covers of their songs by contemporary musicians such as Shemekia Copeland, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Garland Jeffreys, Chris Thomas King, Cassandra Wilson, Nick Cave, Los Lobos, Eagle Eye Cherry, Vernon Reid, James "Blood" Ulmer, Lou Reed, Bonnie Raitt, Marc Ribot, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lucinda Williams and T-Bone Burnett.