Steven Seagal has played more ex-CIA dudes than he's had hot dinners. But even if you were fully aware of the enigmatic action star's lifelong love of the blues, you might not go to one of his gigs expecting any extraordinary renditions. On the Scottish stop of a world tour that has already seen him share a French stage with George Benson, the goateed Seagal goes about his business with the same air of unhurried detachment as does his enduring screen persona.

The effect is surprisingly powerful. It turns out that Seagal's world-weary vocal delivery and mastery of the deceptively static art of aikido are both talents well-suited to playing old-fashioned delta blues on a series of covetable vintage guitars. There is nothing Hasselhoffian about his performance, no winks at his day job or crowd-pleasing quotes from Fire Down Below. Instead, Seagal rocks a panama hat, bosses his five-piece backing band and plays whatever the hell he likes: he's wham-bam Morrison. Of the songs pulled from his two studio albums, Love Doctor and Talk to My Ass add some welcome notes of sass and roadhouse humour to the stew of slow-cooking blues, but the main focus is providing a solid scaffold for Seagal to indulge his love of guitar solos.

Like his hero Albert King, Seagal plays lead using a precise, presumably lethal thumb, though his extended peregrinations are relaxed and playful rather than technically dazzling. In his longest address to a rowdy crowd, Seagal asks for a moment to mark the passing of influential Texas bluesman Johnny Winter. It adds an additional layer of poignancy to the gumbo shuffle of Dark Angel and its "we've all got to die some day" refrain, although Seagal saves his most effective set-piece – a wham-bam cover of Hoochie Coochie Man – for the encore.

• At The Sage, Gateshead 18 July. Box office: 0191-443 4661. Then touring until 25 July.