GLOBAL troubadour Rory McLeod is Thursday's special guest at the Black Swan Folk Club in York.

This self-taught DIY musician accompanies his storytelling with a bizarre solo orchestra made up of spoons, finger cymbals, bandorea, djeme drums, harmonica, guitar, trombone and tap shoes. His melodies draw on influences from flamenco to blues, Celtic to calypso.

McLeod has played harmonica for Michelle Shocked and harmonica and slide guitar for Taj Mahal and West African guitarist Ali Farka Toure, and he has collaborated with Moroccan oud virtuoso Hassan Erraji, Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell and Irish banjo player Paul Rodden.

All that and in 1980 he spent a year as a fire-eater, clown and labourer with a small Aztec family circus, touring farming villages and tobacco plantations.

His international musical career - he was crowned Texas Harmonica Champion in 1981 - has been mixed with labouring, farming, gardening, cooking and cleaning jobs, and he has run music workshops for disabled patients in hospitals and psychiatric wards.

Tickets for Thursday's 8pm gig are available in advance at £8, concessions £6.50, over the bar at the Black Swan Inn, Peasholme Green, or by phone on 01904 632922 or in person from club organiser Roland Walls.

Updated: 09:37 Friday, May 20, 2005