From Shefbase.com
“I come over here to play music and all anybody wants to talk about is a load of b******t; how they thought I was going to ‘swing onto stage from a chandelier with an Uzi, with explosions’ and everything. They don’t seem to want to understand that’s not why I’m here.”
Best known as one of Hollywood’s most successful action film superstars, Steven Seagal, 55, is back on English soil, but this time his business is strictly musical, as he is keen to emphasize. Although still active in his writing, producing, and acting in feature films, Seagal has spent the last year touring the world with his Blues band Thunderbox and developing his professional music career.
The outcome of this work is the recent 2007 release of ‘Mojo Priest’, a 14-tracked record released in the UK on the Hypertension label dubbed by many as a celebration of the legendary Delta Blues genre.
“It [‘Mojo Priest’] still has got a bit of everything in there but ‘Mojo Priest’ has a little more focus on just being pure Blues,” revealed Seagal, “everything I write has to mean something to me; I don’t just write for the sake of it, it’s all got a message somewhere in there.”
From the reflective “My Time is Numbered”, to the haunting “Dark Angel”, to the striking “Alligator Ass”, each song carries a message, which once understood is representative of a moment in Seagals’ life. “Alligator Ass” is a really, really good example of Louisiana,” explains the action-hero cum singer-songwriter. “My father’s family were from Texas and Texas and Louisiana are kind of like sisters. I remember when I was I was a kid I’d be walking down the street and hear these drums; you’d just hear them playing and you’d notice it was for a funeral procession moving through the middle of the road.”
“But the drums on those streets were something I’ll never forget,” he confesses, “everybody, I mean everybody was on the streets, people in the shops would just start joining in this procession, it was really amazing.”
Mojo Priest is the follow-up to his 2005 World Music album ‘Songs from the Crystal Cave’, which reached number 1 across the channel in France and is his first attempt at releasing an international album.
“This [‘Mojo Priest’] is really the album I wanted to record and release, initially,” he said. “But everyone told me: Don’t make a Blues album because it won’t sell. But now I’ve made the record I wanted to make because Blues is my real passion, and I’ve always wanted to do a Blues record; Making this [type of] music is what I wanted to do with my life. So, here it is.”
Born in Lansing, Michigan, just outside of Detroit, USA, Seagal grew up in a mostly black neighbourhood and was exposed to an abundance of Blues music from a very young age. Before his teens, his family came to LA, “I was playing drums and guitar as a young boy, which I picked up from friends. I finally got a guitar given to me at the age of 12.”
“The Blues was kind of dead in the South at that time,” he remembers. “But, in Detroit, the Blues was very much alive; after World War 2, many Blues legends left coal mines and cotton fields in the South and came across Route 23 to work in the steel mills and in the auto factories.”
“Across the street from where I grew up there lived this old Blues player,” he recalls. “He was not a famous guy, but he had hung around all those legendary players and he played as good as all of them.”
“You know, BB King once said: ‘Greatest Blues players of all time; many of them people never hear their names or knew of them. But, they were great, nonetheless’”.
To date, Seagal has starred in (and produced) over 20 films, which have earned him millions in box office receipts. He has used much of that money to fund a number of charity causes, including his own “Save a Million Lives” organization, which has built villages and aided third world country children who have become orphans because of AIDS.
His success in Hollywood has also given him the means of acquiring one of the world’s greatest guitar collections, with hundreds of rare and vintage guitars to his name including a Gibson Sunburst from the late Freddy King and even guitars that had belonged to BB King, Albert King, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Jimi Hendrix.
“I love and am very grateful to film,” he says. “I never said I was giving up acting or anything like that.”
“I wanted do the tour because this is what I love,” he continues, “movies are great and I had, and still have, great fun doing all that stuff, but Blues is what I’ve always loved and always done.”
With work on a potential third album beginning at the end of this year, Seagal’s following have much to look forward to. “For me it [touring] is not really any more or less demanding,” he said. “It’s something I’ve done a lot of; lots of playing, shows and concerts -– more than cinema, so it’s more of a pleasure than a pressure.”
By Andrew Burgess
-------------------------------------------------------------
“I come over here to play music and all anybody wants to talk about is a load of b******t; how they thought I was going to ‘swing onto stage from a chandelier with an Uzi, with explosions’ and everything. They don’t seem to want to understand that’s not why I’m here.”
Best known as one of Hollywood’s most successful action film superstars, Steven Seagal, 55, is back on English soil, but this time his business is strictly musical, as he is keen to emphasize. Although still active in his writing, producing, and acting in feature films, Seagal has spent the last year touring the world with his Blues band Thunderbox and developing his professional music career.
The outcome of this work is the recent 2007 release of ‘Mojo Priest’, a 14-tracked record released in the UK on the Hypertension label dubbed by many as a celebration of the legendary Delta Blues genre.
“It [‘Mojo Priest’] still has got a bit of everything in there but ‘Mojo Priest’ has a little more focus on just being pure Blues,” revealed Seagal, “everything I write has to mean something to me; I don’t just write for the sake of it, it’s all got a message somewhere in there.”
From the reflective “My Time is Numbered”, to the haunting “Dark Angel”, to the striking “Alligator Ass”, each song carries a message, which once understood is representative of a moment in Seagals’ life. “Alligator Ass” is a really, really good example of Louisiana,” explains the action-hero cum singer-songwriter. “My father’s family were from Texas and Texas and Louisiana are kind of like sisters. I remember when I was I was a kid I’d be walking down the street and hear these drums; you’d just hear them playing and you’d notice it was for a funeral procession moving through the middle of the road.”
“But the drums on those streets were something I’ll never forget,” he confesses, “everybody, I mean everybody was on the streets, people in the shops would just start joining in this procession, it was really amazing.”
Mojo Priest is the follow-up to his 2005 World Music album ‘Songs from the Crystal Cave’, which reached number 1 across the channel in France and is his first attempt at releasing an international album.
“This [‘Mojo Priest’] is really the album I wanted to record and release, initially,” he said. “But everyone told me: Don’t make a Blues album because it won’t sell. But now I’ve made the record I wanted to make because Blues is my real passion, and I’ve always wanted to do a Blues record; Making this [type of] music is what I wanted to do with my life. So, here it is.”
Born in Lansing, Michigan, just outside of Detroit, USA, Seagal grew up in a mostly black neighbourhood and was exposed to an abundance of Blues music from a very young age. Before his teens, his family came to LA, “I was playing drums and guitar as a young boy, which I picked up from friends. I finally got a guitar given to me at the age of 12.”
“The Blues was kind of dead in the South at that time,” he remembers. “But, in Detroit, the Blues was very much alive; after World War 2, many Blues legends left coal mines and cotton fields in the South and came across Route 23 to work in the steel mills and in the auto factories.”
“Across the street from where I grew up there lived this old Blues player,” he recalls. “He was not a famous guy, but he had hung around all those legendary players and he played as good as all of them.”
“You know, BB King once said: ‘Greatest Blues players of all time; many of them people never hear their names or knew of them. But, they were great, nonetheless’”.
To date, Seagal has starred in (and produced) over 20 films, which have earned him millions in box office receipts. He has used much of that money to fund a number of charity causes, including his own “Save a Million Lives” organization, which has built villages and aided third world country children who have become orphans because of AIDS.
His success in Hollywood has also given him the means of acquiring one of the world’s greatest guitar collections, with hundreds of rare and vintage guitars to his name including a Gibson Sunburst from the late Freddy King and even guitars that had belonged to BB King, Albert King, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Jimi Hendrix.
“I love and am very grateful to film,” he says. “I never said I was giving up acting or anything like that.”
“I wanted do the tour because this is what I love,” he continues, “movies are great and I had, and still have, great fun doing all that stuff, but Blues is what I’ve always loved and always done.”
With work on a potential third album beginning at the end of this year, Seagal’s following have much to look forward to. “For me it [touring] is not really any more or less demanding,” he said. “It’s something I’ve done a lot of; lots of playing, shows and concerts -– more than cinema, so it’s more of a pleasure than a pressure.”
By Andrew Burgess
-------------------------------------------------------------
