Bless the day - the Reverend has returned.

Somewhat of a cult icon in the rockabilly/punkabilly scene, Reverend Horton Heat was a regular rock fixture in Edmonton for a number of years, returning every summer like clockwork.

And then one year he didn't appear. The next year came and still no word from the Reverend, a.k.a Jim Heath.

But talking to him in Seattle last Friday, Heath explains this was simply a new strategy for his band, which has been offering up some of the best live shows for more than 20 years. And the next one is tonight at New City where Murder By Death will open the show.

"Ever since 1989 or 1990, we've released a new album exactly every two years and I kind of decided that's cool and everything and at times in my career, I was frustrated we couldn't record every year, you know, and have a new album. But I started realizing that it was kind of overloading our fans a little bit because right about the time our new album was getting really accepted by everybody, here we come with a whole new group of songs," Heath says of his decision to focus more on musicianship than pumping out new recordings.

"In between albums, I'll stop kind of focusing on writing new material and switch my attention more to improving myself as a musician ... dust off some old country instructional manuals and starting learning the stuff - or like gypsy jazz, I went through that phase."

Since the band's 2004 album Revival was released, Reverend Horton Heat and Heath himself have turned over new ground.

Heath's friend Tim Alexander, a Hammond organ player who contributed to Revival and won five Grammy Awards with his band Asleep at the Wheel, approached Heath with an idea to create an instrumental organ project. They call it Reverend Organ Drum and recently released a recording of the songs.

They've also had a bunch of songs picked up for video games, including tunes for Guitar Hero 2, two games in the Tony Hawk Series and PlayStation 3's MotorStorm.