WHEN former Keane lead singer Tom Chaplin played Leeds City Varieties Music Hall last October, it was one of eight intimate shows in his first tour for almost four years, a new beginning after troubled times.

Such has been Tom's renaissance that he is back on the road, playing bigger halls once more on a 14-date itinerary, including a sold-out York Barbican on May 12, his confidence buoyed anew by the response to both his debut solo album, The Wave, and his concerts with his instrument-interchanging band of Sebastian Sternberg, Rosie Langley, Tobie Tripp and Beau Holland.

"Leeds City Varieties was my absolute favourite venue last year, not just because the City Varieties is steeped in history, but there was something in the air that night, having some long and amusing conversations with the audience, and I seem to remember that Geoffrey Boycott came up in conversation, so it was a night full of good Yorkshire humour."

Crucially too, the Leeds City Varieties audience was not alone in enjoying the songs written by Chaplin and produced by Aqualung's Matt Hales for The Wave, Chaplin's first material since Keane bade farewell after 16 years with The Best Of Keane in November 2013.

"With Keane I was more the mouthpiece that sang whatever Tim [Rice-Oxley] wrote for the band, but since then I've become a much more open person on stage, not afraid to make a fool of myself to be honest," says the 38-year-old Hastings-born singer.

Drug addiction twice led Chaplin to rehab, but he has come through to the other side. "2015 was the year I got clean and I started writing the album at the beginning of last year. When I started recording, they were some of the happiest times of my life," he says. "This ball of energy needed to be let out, and I needed to appreciate that getting clean was a way of doing that, leading to feeling happier and feeling I was in touch with something emotional and real again. I get emotional even thinking about that time.

York Press:

Tom Chaplin on his road to recovery

"I had a great time making that record with Matt Hales in Pasadena, going from the English cold to the Californian sun, where Matt had his studio at his house. His family were there too, and it might not have been a glitzy London studio, but it was happy place to be and I definitely thought it was the right atmosphere for making a record."

Tim Rice-Oxley may have been the principal songsmith in Keane, but songs came pouring out of Chaplin when he sat down to write for his solo record. "I was armed with a lot of songs by the time I got to record the album. I had about 40 songs, plenty to choose from," says Chaplin. "I'd written with Matt before, when I'd been out to Pasadena before and met with a few people.

"But having to leave behind my wife and little daughter, I didn't want to go out for too long, so I did the album in two three-week spells, having picked 13/14 songs that felt thematically coherent.

"Sonically, I didn't want to stretch too far from Keane and make something like a jazz-pop record, but there a few twists to make it different from a Keane record. We ended up with the album being completed much earlier than we expected, but we didn't bring it out until October, which gradually felt like the right time, even though there was a lot of traffic with other artists doing the same thing, so it was a gamble to do that, but the singles were doing well enough and it managed to keep its head above water."

The Wave did rather more than that, rising to number three in the charts. "With Keane, things became the norm, but with this solo album, it felt like it might never happen," says Chaplin. "To be able to look at the finished record with a fatherly eye was a fantastic feeling. It felt like being a brand new artist all over again."

Tom Chaplin plays York Barbican on May 12; sold out. Doors open at 7pm.