Spending more time driving around the slightly more distant parts of central Europe is a joy. It always puts me in a reflective mood. I’m reading (yet another) history book about the 1930’s right now, and wandering along the edge of the Bodensee in Lindau, Germany, looking out at the mountains on the far shore in Austria (or maybe Switzerland?) gets my mind racing thinking about history, politics and geography. I am so very rock’n’roll.

The shows in Austria were great, as was hanging out with my friend Mark McCabe – a songwriter everyone should investigate, if you haven’t already. Lindau tonight, thence to Amsterdam to meet up with the Social Distortion boys. I’m also pleased to announce that I’ve been confirmed for the Friday 19th August at this year’s Pukkelpop Festival in Belgium.

Talking of shows, the tours later this year in North America and the UK are selling at a rate that I can best describe as “alarming”. We’re going to be posting some Sold Out notices pretty soon, so if you want to come to a show now might be the time to get some tickets. We are also on the verge of announcing a lot more headline shows for mainland Europe and Ireland for the second half of the year, so hold out for those too.

Now a couple of goodies. First up, I did a session for Wolfgang’s Vault in San Francisco recently, which you can see right here. And finally, here’s the videos of the songs I did for Mike Davies’ BBC Radio 1 session at Download recently. Enjoy.