THE last time Badly Drawn Boy’s Damon Gough played a North Yorkshire gig, he announced he was quitting after 16 years, only to think better of it and return to the Scarborough Spa Theatre stage for an encore.

“Yeah, I did do that, but it’s not my intention to do that. It’s just the sound on stage… sometimes I get so frustrated, but I enjoyed most of that night,” says the north western singer-songwriter, recalling that emotional roller-coaster on the East Coast last October.

“Maybe it’s just the luck of the draw as you’re straight on to the stage and into the situation each night.”

Such unpredictability adds a frisson to a Badly Drawn show, but a new factor will come into Sunday’s performance at the Magic Loungeabout. Damon’s music will be sounding different to Damon himself.

“I’ve just had my ears unblocked – the right one was worse – and for the first few days I couldn’t cope,” he says. “I’d be sat around in a bar and I could hear things that weren’t just near but peripheral. I felt like I was in another world, but it’s settled down now, so hopefully it will improve things on stage.

“I was just used to hearing things that way, with having one ear blocked, like when I was on stage at the Friends Of Mine Festival and because my left ear was the better one, I could hear more from the next stage than I could hear what I was playing.”

Damon has a simple philosophy for Sunday’s headline slot. “Just turn up and play,” he says. “I haven’t had a great deal of time to think about it as I’ve just got back from Italy, playing to 500-600 in a club in Rome on the Thursday night and to 3,000 at a free festival in Bologna the next day, in a square with bars all around.

“It was just me playing that night – it was too expensive to take a band to Italy – and I like playing on my own. I’ve got used to it now.

“I believe I’m headlining one of the stages at the Magic Loungeabout, and I don’t yet know [he was speaking on July 12] if it’ll be just me or with a band, but those two gigs I’ve just done in Italy were two of my favourites, so I might continue playing solo.”

• The Magic Loungeabout festival runs at Broughton Hall, Broughton, near Skipton, from today until Sunday. Badly Drawn Boy headlines the Acoustic Sunday line-up.