A true veteran of American music is back on the road and playing in York even before touring in the US, reports Charles Hutchinson.

ONCE he was the most in-demand hired guitar hand in Los Angeles, playing with the Rolling Stones, John Lennon and Fleetwood Mac.

Now Sneaky Pete Kleinow, the steel guitarist in country rock pioneers The Flying Burrito Brothers, has returned to a studio for the first time in more than a decade.

In a reference to those Burrito days, the new project is called Burrito Deluxe, and it finds 69-year-old Sneaky Pete taking to the road with The Band's Garth Hudson, Jeff 'Stick' Davis and Rick Lonow of The Amazing Rhythm Aces and Carlton Moody, of The Moody Brothers. Tonight they play Fibbers in York, the final date of a brief British tour.

How did this venerable band come about, Pete? "Well, we had a promoter and backers that wanted to put together the band. They came through Stick, the bass player, who also takes good care of us in other ways. He's kind of an all-round guy!" he says. "But we'd all been talking about doing this band; it wasn't just one person talking it up."

They completed the album in Nashville four months ago. "I think we just had a very loose way of putting things together... we hit the recording studios at various times: not just one place and not just one time," Pete recalls.

Being back in a studio was like riding a bike after a break. "Everything we put on this album has been picked up in a day or two and worked out. It's not something we beat our breast over. It all came together quite easily, I guess because we're professionals and we didn't need to argue about it," Pete says.

Song selection was a group process and similarly straightforward. "I didn't have much say about that, not because I didn't want to but everyone had gotten some ideas together and we had more than we needed, so we just picked out what we wanted," he says.

With the album ready for release in Britain on August 16, Burrito Deluxe are on their debut tour to promote The Whole Enchilada, playing their first dates on this side of the Pond rather than in the United States.

"We haven't played in America yet, but it's wonderful to be playing. We really have a band where everyone thinks alike musically and there's no friction. We're way beyond that thing of people arguing," Pete says.

The Flying Burrito Brothers were a notoriously erratic live band under the stewardship of fallen angel Gram Parsons. Burrito Deluxe will be playing two or three Parsons numbers in York, Sin City and Hot Burrito 2 among them, and inevitably Pete's thoughts turn to those days when Parsons' motto was "Death before oblivion".

"I remember getting together with Gram and the other guys in the band and it wasn't exactly what I had in mind if I'd had my way. Gram and Chris Hillman had the say-so.

"Gram was a sweet, nice guy who never got angry, and that was the good news, but the rest of it... things started happening when we started playing gigs. That's when it got difficult.

"Like the night we first played the Whisky A Go Go. We had the bigwigs, the high echelon people, coming to watch us, and as the night went on, several of the group were getting high, and as we made fools of ourselves, these number one guys just walked out. That was a sign to me that it wasn't well received.

"After that it happened many times and that was the frustration for me and Chris Hillman, who were the sober ones having trouble with the bad boys in the band."

Pete found Gram's boozing and drug re-fuelling hard to take. "I was embarrassed when I got on stage and I'd start playing crazy music to fill in the gaps, not to ruin things but because I was frustrated. But it wasn't every gig we played. There were some real good nights."

The Flying Burrito Brothers live on beyond Parsons' early demise, their spirit alive anew in Burrito Deluxe.

Fact file:

Name: Sneaky Pete Kleinow

Occupation: Steel guitarist to the stars

Born: South Bend, Indiana, 1934

Bands: Country rock pioneers The Flying Burrito Brothers, with Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, formed 1968. Burrito Deluxe formed 2004

Session work for: John Lennon, Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Wonder, Randy Newman, Little Feat, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Joe Cocker, Carly Simon, Harry Nilsson etc

Solo album: Meet Sneaky Pete, 1990

Second career: Visual effects specialist in Hollywood. Head animator on Gumby television series, 1960s. Worked on The Empire Strikes Back, 1980, and Terminator, 1984

Where, when and why in York: Fibbers, tonight, playing with Burrito Deluxe

Tickets: £14 before 4.30pm; £16 door

Updated: 15:49 Thursday, July 29, 2004