Squeeze founder Glenn Tilbrook tells Viv Hardwick about the clever idea of offering fans a copy of each night’s performance straight after the show.

GLENN Tilbrook fans at The Sage, Gateshead, Stockton’s ARC and York’s Duchess for next month’s acoustic tour have the fascinating prospect of buying a CD or memory stick of the performance at the end of the night.

“It’s going to be properly mixed and it’s not all acoustic because I’ve got two other guys (Simon Hanson and Chris McNally) playing with me in the second half of the show. I’ve been thinking about this for a few years and the performance is along the lines of early Tyrannosaurus Rex with bongos, percussion, and also Indian harmonium, ukulele with a stripped back sound, but we’re also including three iPads as well.

“That makes me sound like an Apple salesperson, but I’m not.

There are brilliant instruments available this way, and they cost ten quid, and as a professional musician I just want the best quality,” Tilbrook says.

So, does he get time for an encore before the show is committed to the recording process?

“There is plenty of time, and I’m selling CDs and jump drives which you just plug into your computer. So each night’s show will go onto those.

The guy who is supporting me on the tour, Steve Poltz, is a brilliant musician and singer-songwriter who is from San Diego. He toured with me about ten years ago and I was doing a date in Chicago in April this year and Steve was there and I went along to see him. He was selling his show afterwards and I listened to one of the recordings and I thought it was amazing because there was no compromise on quality.

“You’ve had a night out that’s terrific and, now, you can take it home with you. So I’m doing exactly the same thing. It’s a kind of version of the future, although we’re all still scratching around, trying to discover what it means to be a musician and I think the industry has come back down to some very basic things.

One of them is that I can no longer make a living from making records, I still want to make records, not as a fig leaf to hide behind, but because I want to express myself. The way for me to make money is to play gigs and I’ve very fortunate that I love doing it and it’s my job,” Tilbrook says.

Then he surprises me by admitting that he has no idea about what to charge for these “instant performances”.

“I’m sorry, I haven’t got that far, I don’t know,” he says, bursting into laughter.

“It will be reasonable,” agrees Tilbrook, who is now offering the ultimate in performer and fan night out.

He’s still busy in the recording studio (well, he owns one in London) and has an album on release, with Nine Below Zero, called The Co-operative, where Tilbrook has been working on songs which reflect the world today.

“There’s the riots and the banking system, which sounds serious, but I’m preoccupied on what democracy means to everybody and what freedom of the Press means. When I went into the studio with Nine Below Zero (the Eighties cutl band) I wanted to do an album like the jazz musicians do. We just jammed until we got something, and I’ve never done a record that was so off-the-cuff before.

We wanted it to sound live and an ‘old school’ approach and it was all captured in a moment.”

The 54-year-old says it doesn’t matter whether his audience is 50 people or a festival.

“This is quite a big tour for me because I’m out for seven weeks and it’s also lovely that we’ve got Squeeze back together and we toured on a scale that I’d practically forgotten about. But all this made me realise how much I love this kind of touring and how it feeds my imagination and I think it helps Squeeze along as well,” says Tilbrook.

Bravely, he asks for requests for songs from the audience.

“Mostly they shout out some of the familiar Squeeze songs like Cool For Cats but there are also calls for some of my solo catalogue as well,” says the award-winning songwriter.

TILBROOK and Squeeze bandmate Chris Difford capped their first tour in ten years with Mojo Honours this year plus a PPL Radio Academy Lifetime Achievement Award.

“It’s really nice to get awards and we’ve started to get a few in the past few years. I don’t want to sound blase about it because it’s a pat on the back from the industry, but it’s not what I think about. I play records at my local pub because I like the opportunity for me to listen to music. This guy of about 17 or 18 came up and said ‘you’re Glenn Tilbrook?’ and I said ‘yes’ and he asked me to play some Squeeze, but I told him that I don’t play my own music when I’m DJing. He was quite upset, which I thought was very sweet,” says Tilbrook.

The performer has a reputation for performing an impromptu gig every now and then.

“I haven’t done that recently, but I do like to take the audience on a bit of a walkabout. I just say ‘let’s go for a walk, I’ll play and you won’t miss out on anything, I’m not trying to trick you’. That injects an extra element,” explains Tilbrook who doesn’t plan his walkabouts in advance.

“My favourite ending was in Boston in the US and we were out on the street and there was a traffic hold-up and I asked a complete stranger if I could get into his car and he said ‘yes’ and I drove away at the end of the show. It was a great moment for me and the audience loved it.”

• Glenn Tilbrook Acoustic Tour: November 27, The Sage Gateshead, Box Office: 0191-443-4661; November 29, The ARC, Stockton, 01642-525-199; December 4, The Duchess York, 08444-77-1000. All tickets: £17.50.