Steven Seagal and Thunderbox

James ‘Super Chikan’ Johnson

A true old-boy blues musician with the blues running through his veins, James ‘Super Chikan’ Johnson, did a fine job of supplying his own personality stamped renditions of the blues, all with his home made guitar made from an old ceiling fan. James has such a unique performance style, but the end result is a riveting, attention grabbing, and most of all highly polished set of deep blues songs that got the night off to a good start.

Greg Taylor

Within the world of bar-band blues, Hollywood actor Steven Seagal (aka The Priest of Mojo) is a highly respected Blues musician and has a very good reputation for traditional classic style blues. Touring in support of his new album, Mojo Priest, which features Steven providing not only lead vocals, but also lead and rhythm guitars, drums and production, a very healthy sized crowd at the Plymouth Pavilions bore witness to a performance that did supreme justice to the history steeped music of his self-confessed influences, Blues icons including Muddy Waters, BB King, Bo Diddley, Willie "Pine Top" Perkins and Hubert Sumlin. Steven may not be the best singer in the world, and his stage performance is somewhat less than energetic, but the way that he connects with the blues and, feels, the music is quite obvious from his intense performance, it has to be said that he is backed by a band of phenomenal quality in the form of Thunderbox, a super-tight band that simply ooze Blues from every pore, the two superb backing singers, one male, one female worked very hard to get, and keep the crowd up out of their seats and involved from start to finish. Quirky anecdotes introducing songs were well received, especially the history behind the superb, Alligator Ass, and as the crowd proved to be very receptive, Steven visibly began to enjoy himself. No doubt any true blues connoisseur present would be less positive on the performance than myself, but I am not one of those and I had a surprisingly enjoyable evening, as it seemed to me, were most of the true blues fans all around me.

Greg Taylor