THE Jim Jones Revue are breaking in new songs on a short and snappy April tour in the lead-up to recording their third album.

“Before we go into the studio, we thought it’d be good to do these new songs live and good to go to towns we’ve not played or played only once before,” says Jim, frontman of the raucous London garage rock band.

“We’ve had to tell fans in places like Scotland that it’s not a ‘proper’ tour but a treat for fans in new places for us to try out new material – places like Gloucester, Swansea, Wolverhampton, Preston and Stoke.”

Tonight will be Jim’s debut gig in York too, although he does have connections with the city. “I have some friends there,” he says, ahead of the Fibbers concert. “Fraser Smith played in a band with me before he joined Shed Seven. I think he’s teaching piano now, isn’t he?””

Thoughts turn to the new album. “There’s a lot of aggression in the songs but it’s not negative; it’s uplifting and positive,” says Jim. “There’s an element of anger, and the way to sum it up sonically is that it’s loud and aggressive – though it doesn’t have to be loud as long as it’s intense.

“Hopefully your feet will come two feet off the ground when we play the songs. If you’re smart, you’ll have your dancing shoes on, so that when you land again, you can boogie.”

Jim drew his inspiration for forming The Jim Jones Revue from Rupert Orton, brother of singer-songwriter Beth. “He was promoting shows in East London, bringing over East Coast blues boys who were in their 80s and 90s, who still had more charisma than the bands around you, and you’d think, “How has the bar dropped so far since then?.”

Orton would present the likes of T-Model Ford and David Honeyboy Edwards at a venue called Spits, above Spitalfields market. “He started booking shows for my band of the time, and when that band’s path was over, he asked me, ‘What would you like to do next?’. I said, ‘I’d like to do something with the energy of Little Richard’,” recalls Jim.

“I got talking to Rupert and it turned out we’d been to the same Gun Club show at the Electric Ballroom, and the same Birthday Party and Johnny Thunders gigs too, and when you saw those bands at that age, they had so much energy and that galvanises you.”

Jim took those memories into forming The Jim Jones Revue three years ago with Rupert on guitar, Heavy Stereo drummer Nick Jones, Elliot Mortimer on piano and Gavin Jay on bass. “We headhunted a bass player and Gavin was the one. He always wore a good suit!” says Jim.

The line-up settled in quickly. “I remember we tried out a Little Richard song, Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!, and it sounded great,” says Jim.

A year ago, after touring solidly for a year, Elliot Mortimer decided he did not want to be away from home for another year. “It was making him really quite ill, being away from his family,” says Jim.

Into the line-up came a young pianist from South London, Henry Herbert, or Double H as Jim calls him. “He’s a dynamic player and a little younger than the rest of us, so when we said we were going away on tour for three months, he said ‘Great’!” says Jim.

“He’s helped us define the music even more; he’s sharpened it somewhat. It’s more like a dagger now than a carving knife.”

Making the new songs match fit for selection for the new album is the immediate task on this month’s nine-date tour. “There’s an old age where musicians say that one concert is worth ten rehearsals, and it’s the same with songs,” says Jim. “You get all these revelations about how you should be doing a song and if the crowd goes wild, you know you’ve got it right.”

The tour coincides with the release of The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project: The Journey Is Long, an album of covers of unreleased Pierece songs recorded by Nick Cave, Debbie Harry, Mark Lanegan, Lydia Lunch, Barry Adamson, Mick Harvey and…The Jim Jones Revue, who have contributed It Ain’t My Problem Baby. “It’s the first chance to hear Henry Herbert on piano on a recording,” says Jim.

“We’re very proud to have been asked to be involved in such good company – and of course we’re playing the song on the tour.”

• The Jim Jones Revue play Fibbers, York, tonight. The support act will be Gruff Rhys’s Welsh instrumental surf rockers Y Niwi.