Bryan Lee has been playing the blues in Chicago since the early ’60s and in the Quarter since Edwin Edwards was everyone’s favorite politician, so he’s got a lot of respect coming to him. He plays guitar like he knows it, too—like he’s heard everyone’s opinion twice and doesn’t care much about yours. In fact, the last track on this CD just happens to be titled “Kiss My Ass For A Change.”

This is his first studio CD in five years and his first since he lost his main gig at the old Absinthe Bar (a natural phenomenon best captured on two stellar CDs, “Live At The Absinthe Bar-Friday Night” and “Saturday  Night.”), so the eyes of the blues world are on him to deliver. And on Crawfish Lady, his self-described best work, he’s managed to pull that fire out of the club and translate it to the studio more intact than on any of his previous albums.

Lee is the kind of man who steps right up to the challenge. His opening hand is a raucous take on Leon Russell’s “Palace Of The King” that he cleverly turns into a homage to Freddie King. But he doesn’t leave his Luther Allison-inspired guitar licks in the Midwest—he spends the album dousing his Chicago fire with a lot of cool Mississippi mud, aided and abetted by his crack band, especially the four-handed threat that is organist Marc Adams and pianist George Rossy. Highlights include the tour-de-force instrumental showdown on “Louisiana Woman,” Lee’s second-line chicken scratch on “Something’s Wrong” (“I paid all the rent and I still can’t get inside my house”), and the surprisingly tender ballad “Sweet And Beautiful Lady.” Practically an encyclopedia of dirty, nasty, bent-over blues, Crawfish Lady delivers a spicy thrill as real as the Mulate’s etouffee recipe that comes in the liner notes. And if you don’t like it—well, you know what you can do.