IT'S FAIR to say that over the past two years, Tim Burgess has been a very, very busy man.
In that time, the Charlatans singer – who has announced a solo show at Falmouth's Princess Pavilion on Wednesday, September 18 – has completed Telling Stories, an autobiography for Penguin Books.
He's launched the bold O Genesis record label, releasing a series of 7" singles that reflects Burgess'own diverse musical interests and his phenomenal crate-digging instincts.
That's not to mention his presence on Twitter, where his Tim Peak's Diner has become a virtual meeting place for music obsessives the world over.
This, alongside his regular eclectic DJ sets, led Burgess to the attention of BBC 6 Music, who commissioned him to produce shows on Christmas and New Year's Eve.
And then, of course, there's his solo album Oh No I Love You, which arguably features some of Burgess' finest music to date.
It's been a long journey from Manchester to Los Angeles, to a grey part of North East London and Nashville ....
While so many of Burgess' contemporaries from the 1990s have disappeared to come back with lucrative reformations, he and his band have continued to evolve, with The Charlatans taking the brave decision to release one of their most recent albums online for free.
You get the sense that if he didn't take these risks – or as he puts it, "flip my life around", Tim Burgess might get bored.
"The more things I've got orbiting around, the more excited I get. More is more. I want to keep myself busy and stimulated, and I did have quite a lot of time on my hands because I'd left Los Angeles and plonked myself in Seven Sisters."
This return to the UK after a few years spent largely based in California coincided with a decision to finally give in to pestering from Penguin that he put the story of his life into print.
But Burgess wasn't content only to look into the past – he wanted to revitalise his present, and look to the future. "I thought when I'm doing a book I have to do a record at the same time," he explained.
Yet the tale of Oh No I Love You begins in the past, probably about two thirds away through the narrative of Telling Stories, when Burgess carried Kurt Wagner's guitar to his van after a Lambchop gig in Manchester in 2000.
"As I've said to many people I've enthused about along the way, 'hey we should write something together'. He said, 'sure, Tim, you write the music and I'll write the words'."
The idea lay dormant for a decade until the downtime after the last Charlatans tour, as Burgess was penning Telling Stories.
"I thought maybe I should just go to Nashville and hook up with Kurt, no strings attached at all, and see what happens, maybe we can write a song together," he said. "He said that he wanted to be my mirror. I found that very interesting."
Back in the UK, Burgess thrashed out these ideas for songs into demos, and sent them back to Nashville, where Martin Evers put together "a dream band" featuring Chris Scruggs (whose grandfather Earl Scruggs wrote the Beverley Hillbillies theme), Carl Broemel, of My Morning Jacket, members of Lambchop and 70-year-old saxophonist Denis Solee.
Oh No I Love You is no Nashville pastiche, in thrall the country and western tradition. Influenced by Arthur Russell, Bill Callahan and Bob Dylan as much as Lambchop and the local greats, it also features electronic input from Gabe Gurnsey, drummer with London avant-techno group Factory Floor.
Burgess added: "It's a Venn diagram, the two cells with a little in the middle where we met. I tried to speak Nashville in a Manchester accent. If it were a film it'd be a North-Western."
The man with one of the most extraordinary haircuts in rock concluded: "I was listening to the Great Rock & Roll Swindle as I was writing my book. I was reflecting saying 'Tim, what has changed?' Well I'm still a punk, I'm now in love, which is a great feeling, and I'm listening to the Great Rock & Roll Swindle.
"I've been through great stuff, I've been through drugs, death of a friend, ups and downs, but the record is still there. And then My Way came on, and I thought, that's the end of the book. Or not the end ...."
Tickets for the Falmouth gig on September 18 are £15 from the box office on 01326 211222.
