Dr John's recent album, the gruesomely titled N'Awlinz: Dis Dat or D'Udda, featured the gravel-voiced veteran paying homage to the pungent heritage of New Orleans music, buttressed by a small army of prestigious guests (Mavis Staples, Randy Newman, BB King and quite a lot more). It's not a project you could hope to repeat onstage, and the Doctor's touring setup is on a smaller scale, featuring him on organ and piano, accompanied by bass, drums and guitar.

It would be nice to hear him duet with a singer of Staples's stature (both musical and physical), and a brass section would be welcome, but his rollicking Crescent City piano and cracked, laconic vocals are more than enough to hold centre stage. With his suit, braces, hat and ponytail, and the walking stick that he lays carefully on top of the piano, the Doc has crafted his own eccentric persona, as if he were offering a deadpan guided tour of the backwaters and bordellos of his Louisiana homeland.

His music is a rich stew of myths, legends and ancient reverberations of the blues, like his rolling boogie-ish saga Stakalee or his funereal slow-lurching treatment of When the Saints Go Marching In. He doles out fulsome praise to his backing musicians (not that you can understand a lot of what he says, so exaggerated is his Big Easy drawl) but it's his own playing that propels the performance.

He could vamp and extemporise on organ from dawn till dusk, but really hits his stride on the piano, where his crafty rhythmic shifts and perverse syncopations impart epic funkiness to the likes of In the Right Place at the Wrong Time or a palpitating Lay My Burden Down. Aptly, the band play a chorus or two of It's Too Funky in Here when the Doc saunters off at the end of the show. He reappears to encore with So Long, a jazzy lounge lullaby that hypnotises the house into a gentle snooze.