DAVID Gray promises his Lost And Found tour show is unlike anything he has done before.

Monday’s audience at York Barbican will discover what that entails in the only Yorkshire date of his late-spring series of eight acoustic evenings.

Explaining the tour title and concept, David says: “I’ve called it Lost And Found because my latest album, Foundling, seemed to chime as a record with the Lost Songs album I did after White Ladder.

“The dynamic was to go down rather than up, so the two things chimed together, and the title also represents that I’m not just playing the new album but picking songs that may have been neglected, even covers, from the past 15 years.”

For these intimate concerts, the Manchester singer-songwriter and his band will be reinterpreting songs “both large and small”.

“Everything has been reinvented,” he says. “We’ve already done it for shows in America, where we did 13 or 14 dates when Foundling went top ten (whereas it went Top 20 here).

“In terms of the way that the sound of the music is captured and presented at these shows, it’ll be more like a recording session than a gig in many ways. Acoustic instruments will be mic’d up for their real sound, rather than going for the usual pick-up sound, and as a result volume levels both for the band and the audience will have to be kept much lower than at your average ‘rock’ show.

“Hopefully the sonic results will be more than worth the sacrifice of a few decibels. Essentially the Lost And Found show will be a listening experience.” David climbed to his peak with his 1999 album White Ladder and its ubiquitous single Babylon, but latterly he has occupied a grey area. “In this country there’s a brutal turnover and for two records I didn’t have the support I needed from the radio because it’s always the cult of the new and I just wasn’t this year’s flavour, but in America rootsy music has a stronger basis,” he says.

“Britain has never known what to do with that stuff, and in terms of the mainstream, hardly anything crosses over. If you look at Nick Drake and John Martyn, both had scarred careers and we didn’t pick up on them until later.”

Where does David feel he fits in now? “I’m a long-game player – I’ve had plenty of records that have not sold in the past – and in the States, once you’re on board the ship, it takes a long time to turn round.”

Lost And Found is but one part of that long journey.

“This is a fans’ gig, though it will have the big hits too,” he says. “There’ll be real double bass, real piano, harmonium, cello, six people singing, so the biggest impact is the backing vocals… because there’s no electric bass clambering all over everything.

“The band will be grouped together as closely as possible and we’ll be working with the silence of the room, so the music will be treated completely differently.

“It’s something that I’ve dreamt of doing for a long time and it is a risk, but that’s what life’s about, otherwise you’re just penned in – which is what happens to so many people.”

Fame can turn you and make you over-analyse your success, says David, who prefers to follow his own path. “I just play music and if people come along, great, as for me it’s all about the passion of the songs.”

• David Gray, Lost And Found Tour, York Barbican, Monday, doors open at 7pm. Tickets: £38.50 or £29.50 on 0844 854 2757, 0844 8110051 or 0844 826 2826 and online at gigsandtours.com or ticketmaster.co.uk

PS... David Gray has a message for his former art teacher in Wales, Stephen Barnsley, who moved to York. “If you’re still there, hello Steve! I hope to see you there on Monday.”