Laurie told Radio.com that he's always felt like his truest self when he's onstage playing music. "I think of acting, it's all about putting on masks of some kind and music is all about removing them really," he explained. "When you're singing a song, you're telling a story that requires playing a character, but even so, there's something about music that is very exposing. In a good way."

Laurie's latest album focuses on the music of New Orleans, from covers of standard blues songs like "Why Don't You Do Right?" by Kansas Joe McCoy to more contemporary tracks like "One for My Baby," which was popularized by Frank Sinatra in the '40s.

The record is a love letter to the music Laurie grew up listening to as a child in England. "There's kinds of English music that I could have got into," he said. "But they just didn't touch me the way Muddy Waters touched me or the way Lead Belly touched me. It was just a direct experience. It was just like a thunderbolt."

Though he can't remember the song he first heard that got him hooked, he remembers the feeling of hearing that first blues note. "It just changed everything for me," he said. "I saved up and went out and bought my first record, which was a Muddy Waters record. Not really knowing anything about Muddy Waters, but you have to start somewhere."

Blues and jazz music, Laurie said, is once of the best things America has given to the world. "It is the biggest, possibly, equaled only by the martini, which is another splendid contribution to world culture," he joked.