NICK Lowe and his masked band Los Straitjackets will be headlining Glastonbury’s Acoustic Stage next Friday, only three nights after a much more intimate Yorkshire gig.

Lowe, the power-pop and New Wave luminary with the Brinsley Schwarz and Rockpile past, will present his Quality Rock & Roll Revue at the 200-seat Pocklington Arts Centre next Tuesday.

Lowe, 70, is touring in the wake of releasing two EPs recorded with Los Straitjackets, the American instrumental rock combo with a predilection for wearing Lucha Libre Mexican wrestling masks and an album of Lowe covers, What’s So Funny About Peace Love & Los Straitjackets, as their latest release.

"I've known them for a long time, we share managers, and that's why it's not a long shot for us to work together," says Lowe. "I've got tangled up with them! They're a pretty successful in the USA, based in Nashville, playing surf instrumentals, writing their own material, and they can make any tune work in the surf style."

Lowe last released an album, his Christmas set, Quality Street, A Seasonal Selection For All The Family, in 2013. "But I lost two colleagues to cancer, drummer Bobby Irwin and tour manager Neil Brockbank," recalls Lowe.

"We always used to fight like mad, but I just wasn't in the mood to promote that album, but Christmas records are the gift that keeps giving, and after two years it was quietly suggested we should get a Christmas show together, playing the American East Coast and West Coast, Scandinavia and Spain, and one show in London, with Los Straitjackets.

York Press:

HOME AND AWAY: Nick Lowe leaves behind London to play his first full-scale British tour in two decades. Picture: Dan Burn-Forti

"Then we started to get 'out-of-season' work and that's when it really took off. The interesting thing was that when we first got together, they very diligently learned the record as backing musicians would, but it became apparent to me that we could do more than that.

"I thought, let's be looser than that, and if we work the songs up and they're good, we'll do them that way, and so a style emerged until the point I started writing songs with this project in mind, and now it feels like something we've made up ourselves."

Lowe continues: "Having said that, I don't know what to expect on this tour. This is the first proper UK tour I've done in 20 years, but the places we're playing are quite out of the way – village halls and scout huts – though they're just the kind of place where the music we do sounds fantastic.

"Who knows who will turn up. Maybe people think I'm dead! But now you can break all the rules with how you present your music. The world is hardly on the edge of its seat waiting for another Nick Lowe album, as I've made so many, but I'm now a small business, where people can buy the records at the merch table. It's really to say, 'here we are'."

At next Tuesday's show, Lowe will "come on, do a little run; then Los Straitjackets do their thing, and I come back on and we finish off things together". "You have to have a framework, otherwise it would be a dog's dinner!" he says.

"There are certain songs that you have to play at certain places in the show, but we leave places where we can change things, and we have a few unusual selections, so you'll have to come to the show to find out."

Nick Lowe’s Quality Rock & Roll Revue, starring Los Straitjackets, Pocklington Arts Centre, June 25, 8pm. Box office: 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk