FIELD Music’s Peter Brewis is returning specially from his honeymoon in the Lake District to play the showcase gig at the first ever Harrogate International Festival Fringe on Thursday.

“I’ve told my wife, ‘Harrogate has some great hotels as it’s a conference town, so we’ll be staying there for one night’…then it’ll be, ‘oh, by the way, I’m playing a gig here tonight’!” he says, sounding a little nervous behind the jocular front.

Peter, who tied the knot at the Whitley Bay lighthouse last Friday, will head across the Pennines to re-unite with his brother David, Kev Dosdale and Ian Black for the Sunderland band’s Fringe show.

“I’d met the Fringe organiser, Graham Chalmers, a couple of times before, the last time when he came to a Field Music show in Leeds and we had a good chat about the possibility of us playing at the Fringe,” recalls Peter. “It sounded a really good idea, and Graham was really enthusiastic, which is very important.

“Quite often when you do a festival, you’re just one of many acts, but this time it’s going to be a totally different experience for us: the building for a start, we don’t usually get to play at a theatre.”

To prove the point, the chance to hear energetic, mini-prog gems from new album Field Music (Measure) at such close quarters comes on the heels of the Brewis brothers playing two of the summer’s premier festivals, Glastonbury and Meltdown.

Released in February, the 20-track album provides an off-kilter, indie take on everything from Led Zeppelin to 10CC, folk to classical music. “We’ve tried to bring all our elements together on one album; that was the idea behind having that many tracks – and we said from the beginning that we didn’t want it to be more expensive than a single album,” says Peter.

“We’ve had complaints that we’ve got too many tracks on there and that it could have made a great single album, but I say, ‘well, put your choices on one album, and I bet no two people would put the same ten or 12 tracks’. Everyone would have different songs that they do or don’t like, and our idea was to have something for everyone.

“We had a lot of fun making it; normally we make short records, when the hardest part is editing ourselves, but this time we’re letting the audience edit it, so they’re playing a part in the record.”

Whereas festival performances usually involve a 15-minute changeover for a 45-minute set by “Field Music, the rock band”, the Harrogate show gives the band a chance to vary the song arrangements in a longer set. “We added acoustic guitar for the first time at Meltdown and we’ll definitely have that on Thursday,” says Peter.

Will Field Music be unveiling any new material penned since the album? “Oh god no! We’re hopeless at writing while we’re touring as we can’t get in the right mind, but me and Dave will start putting things together in the studio by December,” Peter promises.