JOSH Rouse, the chameleon spirit of Americana music, will play Pocklington Arts Centre on his autumn tour. Tickets for his November 22 show are on sale at £12.50 in advance on 01759 304819 or £13.50 on the door.

Rouse grew up in Nebraska with his mother and stepfather, whose construction work took the family around the West. Looking to stay at the same school for more than a year or two, he lived as a teenager with his father, a career military man, in Georgia, then in Kentucky.

Rouse went from trombonist/violinist in his middle-school orchestra to high-school punk, writing his first song at 18. "But we never played out or anything. We were just a basement band, sitting around watching 120 Minutes," recalls the singer, songwriter and guitarist.

After a stint at Austin Peay University in Clarksville, Tennessee, wanderlust sent Rouse to Arizona and South Dakota before he settled near Nashville in 1996. Why Nashville? "Just because it was a city where there are clubs and a music scene. I figured maybe I could meet some people," he says.

His debut album of home recordings, Dressed Up Like Nebraska, was released on the Slow River subsidiary of Rykodisc Records in 1998, surprising even Rouse with the acclaim it earned on the roots and alt country scene.

"When I was younger, in bands, it was like, 'we're gonna get a record deal, that's the big dream', but doing Dressed Up, it was like, 'OK, this is it, I'm gonna put this out myself, then find something else to do'. Even my mom was saying 'you're getting older...'. As soon as I quit caring, a record deal popped up."

The following year he collaborated with Lambchop's Kurt Wagner on the six-track EP Chester, Rouse providing the music for Wagner's typically oblique lyrics.

Film director Cameron Crowe featured Directions, a track from Rouse's second solo album, 2000's Home, on his soundtrack to Vanilla Sky, and by now Rouse was able to leave behind day jobs as a hotel valet, parking attendant and barista.

His third album, 2002's Under Cold Blue Stars, was a loose concept record. "I was writing the songs when I was on the road and they started going together, so I thought, why not?" Rouse says. "It's almost like a short film or a little screenplay. I took all these relationship themes and decided to make it about a couple."

Loops, horns, processed strings and other atmospherics were a feature of Rouse's arrangements on that album, but his comments at the time of its release indicated his next change of direction. "I like stuff that's easy on the ears, all that 1972 singer-songwriter stuff. I just love it. I'm a closet easy listening fan," he said.

Last year, he duly recorded a record called 1972, a gorgeously performed tribute to the music of the year in which Rouse was born. In June this year came The Smooth Sounds Of Josh Rouse DVD, a live show taped in Nashville on New Year's Eve 2003 that captured Rouse and his band in the midst of his 1972 world tour.

This Rykodisc DVD includes the documentary The Many Moods Of Josh Rouse and a separate CD of rare and previously unreleased Rouse music, Rarities, hand selected from his personal cupboard of recordings by Josh himself.

Updated: 15:35 Thursday, September 09, 2004