Boy power

BADLY Drawn Boy hasn't played a show since finishing off last year with a three-week tour of America.

Next Friday, however, a bar in York will be the place to hear his first British performance of new material from his imminent album, One Plus One Is One. So far those songs have been aired only in the United States.

Next week's exclusive gig at Fibbers forms part of the week of Passport: Back To The Bars shows in aid of Shelter and War Child, wherein the likes of The Cure, Travis, The Darkness, Pet Shop Boys and Ash will play the Barfly chain of bars in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Cardiff, Liverpool and York.

Big names, small venues, you get the picture, and charity gets another boost from a novel rock format.

"I'm not sure how they chose which artist for which venue, but it's good it's York for my show because it's not somewhere I've played and it's not on my normal tour schedule," says Damon Gough, the Mercury Music Prize-winning songwriter behind the Badly Drawn Boy moniker.

"I think I've only ever been to York once... on an historical school trip, which is probably quite common. It was when I was at primary school in Bolton, and I was about five or six, and I think I can remember doing some brass rubbings and walking the walls. Most recently, I've seen York on the telly for the snooker."

Damon's gig next week will be all the more special for being the first concert in a year when he will not be performing regularly. "I'm not going to be doing a lot of touring this year. The plan is to do a few big London gigs, a few big Manchester gigs and a few festivals, such as Strummerville in Somerset in April," he says.

His new album is awaiting only the artwork - he was due to meet the artist immediately after this interview on Tuesday - and you can sense that Damon is champing at the bit for the record to be released.

"The album has been ready since December: it was mastered five or six weeks ago, and I wish it was coming out yesterday," he says.

"I'm usually quite lucky in not having to wait, and the record should have been out in April but I'm waiting on the artwork, and in a worst-case scenario it could be June, but hopefully it will be out in the middle of May."

The record was recorded in the musical hotbed of Stockport.

"That was where my dad was born, about five, six or seven miles from where I live now he lives with his girlfriend and two children in the Manchester suburb of Chorlton.

"I'm the first person to record in the studio there, and I was kind of the guinea pig to try out recording after they expanded it from being just a rehearsal studio," says Damon.

"I'll be rehearsing there for next week's gig, and it's my favourite place to rehearse as it's got a good vibe, it's more homely than other studios, and I've become part of the furniture there over past ten to 12 months."

Damon will be rehearsing and performing with former Audioweb bass player Sean McCann and drummer Alex Thomas, who join him in a new trio line-up that made its debut in America last year and now feature on the new album.

"In America it was just the dream trio," says Damon. "The tour was billed as solo but I wanted company.

"I've done a bit of everything in the past: just me and my guitar, which I did at the European festivals, and prior to that I've toured everywhere, America, Australia, with various versions of a five-piece. Now I've got this trio.

"The way we put the album together was to rehearse until we knew the songs well enough to put down takes and then add overdubs with strings and flutes, but the mainstays were me and Alex and Sean."

The new album, Damon's fourth, takes its title of One Plus One Is One from a ten-year-old song that he had never forgotten but newly re-worked and expanded after coming across an old tape.

"I re-wrote it, kept the title and it just seemed to fit in with the record," he says. "This album is the most ambiguous record I've made in terms of there being a lot of unusual lyrics that are ambiguous, and that's totally intentional.

"There's a collage of images, and it's a bit darker, less about one relationship, i.e. mine with my girlfriend, but more about lots of relationships I have acquired over six years. Some of them have been a letdown and I just want to draw on all that."

From the lo-fi folk charms of 2000's The Hour Of Bewilderbeast, through the panoramic pop of About A Boy film soundtrack, and onwards to 2002's Have You Fed The Fish?, Badly Drawn Boy has established himself as a classically English writer of wit and originality. He is still seeking to improve.

"As a songwriter you're looking for interesting phrases, when you're trying to be more interesting than pop," he says. "Bob Dylan is consistently the Holy Grail for someone like me, where you think 'How did he write that when he was 20?', but that said, I've not listened to every Dylan record, just as I've not listened to every Beatles record. I would rather pick up my guitar and write something of my own.

"With me, I can't wait to make the next record. I'm an eager beaver who started late, so now I'm playing catch-up."

Damon does not suffer from writer's block.

"Song writing does get easier in one sense - though I don't want to tempt fate - in that your craft becomes instinctive, like any job does the more you do it. I worry about lots of other things, but not where the next song is coming from," he says.

So, what does trouble him? "Everything else, apart from writing songs. The rest of the world is inexplicable, though I'm probably a born worrier. On stage I can be Jack the lad or I can be intense."

Whichever he is next Friday, York will just be delighted to see him. No worries.

Badly Drawn Boy, Fibbers, York, March 5. No tickets available.

Updated: 15:35 Thursday, February 26, 2004