I’m sitting in a Boston studio with Ed Harcourt. It’s a day off in the middle of our East Coast tour and we’re attempting to record a whole album in a day. 5 in the bag so far. Due to budgetary restrictions it’s just me and Ed on the road. Not that I think I’ve ever taken our crew for granted, but now that we’re doing everything ourselves - driving, setting up, dealing with promoters/label/radio, I appreciate them even more. It is so tiring. But the shows have been great - the songs are like old friends and with just the two of us onstage it feels so intense and free, like surfing or something. The journeys have not been without incident, perhaps most notably me trying to drive the wrong way through a Pennsylvania toll booth and having to reverse rapidly across the central reservation as oncoming traffic loomed. And driving in New York is terrifying - a harmony of horns.

Ed is in fine form and has proven to be an excellent navigator. In his friskier moods he has a habit of forcing his mouth over my nose and blowing hard - at which point you are faced with a choice: keep your mouth closed and let your ears explode, or open it and experience a gale of mojito-and-onion-infused exhalation. Just showing his appreciation I suppose.

Just 5 more gigs, then I’m staying on in New York to start on my next album with Zach and Tim from Boomish. I can’t wait.

Spent a week in Barcelona with Peter Schwalm mixing our record ‘December Songs’. Sometimes having two people doing the same job is great – like tag-team editing when one person gets tired. At other times it’s all suppressed rage and self-righteousness as you sit and squirm impatiently thinking ‘I could be doing this much quicker, better, and with a higher smugness quotient’. In the end, after working 14 hours a day, it sounds wonderful and we are still friends. Mixing while drunk however is not a good idea – though it can seem you are working sonic miracles at the time, you probably aren’t. Also during our late-night effort Peter spilt my wine all over his new laptop. It is testament to his sweet nature that he didn’t lose his temper at all. But he did, brilliantly, do a search on his hard drive for ‘liquids’.

Back in London, it was time to start preparing for Ed’s upcoming tour of the US East Coast, for which I will be tripling as guitarist, tour manager and driver. I am scared, as I have never before had any responsibilities on the road beyond ‘don’t play too many wrong notes’. So I’ve been planning itineraries, liaising (hate that word) with record label folk, still trying to sort out Honeytrap artwork/photos, doing a couple of sessions and developing an ulcer…

Another varied week. Started with sessions for Bergmann, an Icelandic artist in the vein of Pink Floyd. We had the pleasure of recording the tracks live, which is a rare occurrence. However this was during a long period of chronic insomnia and I spent most of the 2 days thinking I was about to either collapse or lose my rag.

Then off to the Alps for a huge festival with, believe it or not, Ronan Keating. The view was stunning but the air was thin and the climate so cold that, during the punishing 7am soundcheck, my guitar strings felt like icy razor-blades and every moment not playing was spent blowing pointlessly on my sad, mitten-clad hands. The gig was ok and out of a crowd of 10,000 one person kept launching snowballs at us and another flashed her breasts periodically. We were lifted to the stage on the front of a cumbersome snow-plough, chunting inelegantly down a 45-degree slope at 1mph in full view of absolutely everyone. Later in the hotel I flooded the bathroom with the Jacuzzi which was funny until I realized I’d left all my clothes on the floor. Today I had a session for an odd fish called Ebe with Phil Manzanera (of Roxy Music fame) producing. Chris Spedding also turned up. It was slightly disconcerting to be playing with 2 guitar legends sitting on the sofa behind me. Phil told me he actually failed the Roxy audition, but the guitarist they did choose started a punch-up at a management meeting for which he was sacked. Win some, lose some.