THE Kinks' frontman, Ray Davies, is to release his first solo album in nine years on April 21, his first too since his knighthood for services to the arts in the New Year's Honours List.

Americana will be a 15-track collection of Davies originals on Sony Music's Legacy Recordings imprint and follows his 2013 memoir of the same name, using the book as both source material and creative catalyst.

Davies enlisted the Minneapolis alt.country and country rock group The Jayhawks as his backing band and recorded the album in London at Konk, the studio founded by The Kinks in 1973.

Written, conceived and arranged by Davies, and co-produced with Guy Massey and John Jackson, Americana is an autobiographical work, chronicling the inextricable role America has played in Davies’s life. From his earliest days touring the United States with The Kinks and subsequent blacklisting by the American Musicians Union, to his years playing stadiums and eventually staying in New York and New Orleans for a time, America has served as both muse and tempest to Davies.

The songs dig into the rich American musical tapestry, through the lens of Davies’s American experience, as the music swerves from the open-road manifesto of The Great Highway, through a delicate duet with The Jayhawks’ Karan Grotberg on Message From The Road, to Poetry's reminder of Davies’s ability to spin small detail into penetrating truth.

The album also features short spoken-word passages from Davies’s memoir and the track listing will be Americana; The Deal; Poetry; Message From The Road; A Place In Your Heart; The Mystery Room; Silent Movie; Rock'N'Roll Cowboys; Change For Change; The Man Upstairs; I’ve Heard That Beat Before; A Long Drive Home To Tarzana; The Great Highway; The Invaders and Wings Of Fantasy. A second volume of Americana will be released later in 2017.

Davies's last studio album of original material was Working Man's Cafe in 2008. The Kinks' musical Sunny Afternoon, featuring his story, music and lyrics, will be on tour at the Grand Opera House, York, from February 21 to 25; box office, 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york