I was in New York City over the weekend and, while flipping through the latest issue of Time Out! (a local entertainment rag), I noticed that I had missed a performance by Steven Seagal and his blues band, Thunderbox by a single day. Which sucks. But not for the reasons I initially thought.

You see, I'm a big fan of Seagal's movies--I've probably seen Hard to Kill more than any other person west of the Mississippi--but I recognize that there is a certain level of cheese to his filmography. Okay a massive level of cheese. Except in Hard to Kill, because that movie kicks ass. In fact, that movie kicks so much ass that it kicks the ass off the back of your legs, scoops it up off the ground and brings it to your local FedEx office, mails your ass back to you in via overnight delivery, shows up at your house the moment is delivered, performs a surgical reattachment of your ass, only to proceed to immediately kick it off again to start the whole cycle over again.

Now, I had read somewhere that Seagal was a part-time musician and a collector of vintage guitars, but I had no idea he was taking his act on tour. Or that his band's name was "Thunderbox" which is just sublime.

Having missed Seagal and Thunderbox's performance at B.B. King's, when I got home yesterday I proceeded to look up Seagal and his band's Web presence. I found out that Seagal has released a couple of CDs, the most recent of which is called Mojo Priest. Imagine my surprise when I read a bunch of positive reviews for the CD--what's more, the praise sounded completely irony-free. So I checked out a few tracks for myself and, you know what, they're not too bad.

Seagal jumps all over the blues map on Mojo Priest, from the drowsy blues pop tunes like the opener "Somewhere in Between" to shuffle numbers like "Love Doctor", and bluesy swings such as one of the three cover songs on the CD, "Hoochie Koochie Man". Plus, there's two songs with the words "ass" in the title: "Alligator Ass" and "Talk To My Ass", which are both perfect titles for blues songs. If they ever re-release Hard to Kill, they need to include both these songs in the soundtrack--that way the movie would kick two more asses.

Seagal's voice isn't great, but it's certainly not bad--his straining, half-spoken, half-sung vocals remind me a bit of Albert Collins, especially in the shuffle numbers. And while I didn't get to hear much in the way of his guitar work, if it's anything like the rest of the CD, I expect that it might surprise me as well. About the only thing I didn't like while previewing the CD was the incessant presence of the back-up singers--they're too loud in the mix and didn't really work for me at all.

So yeah, I'm sorry I missed Seagal last week. I would have been curious to see if he could pull off his sound in a live setting. Maybe he'll come to the Bay Area on his tour. If he does, you know I'll be there, requesting "Alligator Ass" all night long.