Rocking at The Rifleman So we kicked off the first bunch of live shows on Friday, with a performance at The Rifleman. Hell of a place. A spectacularly rundown backroom in a corner pub in Hounslow, the gig offers the visiting band a stage and PA - of sorts. The house microphones and stands have all been ripped off, so bring your own. Ditto the foldback monitors. Stage lights don't work. No heating. Fire exit locked. But a very nice welcome from the management, who then left us to get on with it.

Our sound engineer, Torin Brown, who leads a double life as a folk troubadour, played a great opening set. His kind-of-Bob-Dylan-meets-Mike-Scott songs got a warm welcome - about the only thing that was warm in that place. Nice voice and some superb harmonica playing. I especially liked Waterline, an eloquent study in quiet desperation.

We kicked off with a new song, Not Another Wasted Day, and then hammered through everything we know - basically the whole of the album plus one other unrecorded song, Eight Rounds Later. Some rough edges, but we had a brilliant time, and the modest crowd who had braved the bitter cold to be there, gave us a fantastic reception. Thanks especially to all the people who came down from the George Andrew Fan Club (Sky TV division). Kay Burley rules!

You can track the rest of the upcoming dates over at the MySpace site. But if that is a click too far, here they are again:

February 24 THE BORDERLINE, WC2 (+ The Happiness)
February 28 ROCK CITY, Nottingham (+ The Wrens)
March 1 ACADEMY, Birmingham (+ The Wrens)
March 3 100 CLUB, W1 (+ The Storys)
March 9 12-BAR CLUB, WC2 (+ Keith Thomson)

See you there!

The Rifleman, Feb 17: David Sinclair/Torin Brown
Set list: Not Another Wasted Day/Time is the Simplest Thing/Jammed/Pennies on a Plate/Fajita Hell/Bouquet of Weeds/Going to do Something/Eight Rounds Later/Down With Whatever/Life's Too Serious/Dusted & Rusted/The Song Marches on  ¶ 3:08 am