Singer-songwriter, multi instrumentalist, tour manager, label boss, painter, and man of many parts, Andy Sharrocks is veteran of the indie roots scene with a burgeoning contact book and a locker full of stories.

His 47 year career as a fiercely driven independent artist with bands like Accident On The East Lancs, Wilful Damage and his own outfit The Smokin’ Jackets featuring Mick Taylor, seems to have been glued together by musical versatility and resilience.

His new 36 song, triple vinyl opus straddles all his musical influences. There’s country and electric blues, alt. Country, UK Americana, punk injected rock n roll, soul, world music and always a Dylan undertow.

His real forte lies in story telling narratives – some of them autobiographical, others in the third person –which are often born of digging beneath the surface.

The condensed soup can cover of ‘Country Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Durty Blues’ comes with ‘GUMBO’ printed at the bottom, which says much about the wide number of musical ingredients.

You might interpret “condensed” as being synonymous with claustrophobic, as Andy gnarled Beefheart meets Waits style tenor frequently wraps its way round lyrics in a manner that would make fellow Mancunian John Cooper Clark smile.

The key to making it all work lies in his versatile phrasing with which he snarls, cajoles, encourages, empathises and ultimately rock and rolls.

It’s tempting to say the album does what it says on the tin, but there’s more to it than that. Recorded in 8 days with few overdubs you can feel the tension at the core of the project, though looking through the accompanying 64 odd inner sleeve photos, they also suggest music being made with equal amounts of fun and focused intensity.

This sometimes comes through in humorous lyrics as on the would be Victor Brox song which wasn’t, called ‘How Could You Ever Marry An Actor’.

It’s built by the kind of surreal set up that owes much to Sparks; “How could you ever marry an actor; you might be marrying somebody else. You have to factor in the facta, that an actor doesn’t know their real self.”

The suitably tilted ‘Country Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Durty Blues is a warts and all exploration of what Springsteen called the ‘Darkness at the Edge of Town’.

That said, Sharrocks is equally capably of polishing a deeply moving tune such as the poignant ‘Old Leather Coat’ on which his voice is a raw as the emotions he unravels.

Then there’s the subtly interwoven ‘Mississippi Beautiful’ on which the music is once again an extension of the lyrics.

On the Spartan ‘Jane’s Blues’, his Tom Waits vocal finds the perfect foil in Henry Botham’s sonorous Neil Young style piano accompaniment. It’s a haunting track which achieves the singer songwriter’s goal of drawing the listener into a world outside of space and time via a great opening verse: “Jane’s got sadness in her eyes, she carries in her soul, She’s carried it all though her short life, and she don’t even know.”

He further amplifies lyrical meaning through contrasting musical arrangements, subtle textures and the occasional groove.

And just when you think you’ve got his measure, he delivers a faux rumba on ‘Do You Still Think Of Me’, on which he sounds like Alex Harvey,  leading into the priceless defining line: “Do you still think of me, because I still have nightmares over you!”

He extends his sharp vocals into a full blown Graham Parker style snarl on “What Did You Say”, on an unexpected duet with Michelle Turnbull, complete with back and forth word play retorts.

He also leans into back porch feel of another broken relationship song ‘Get Some Distance’, featuring a shimmering acoustic.

And if the musical, rootsy style comes with a palpable retro influence, it’s something he telling alludes to in his PR, as he delivers an honest mission statement, in: “Reaching out to an older demographic, the type of person who liked songs like these the first time round.”

He also tries to marry his retro introspection with a sense of counter culture, but his music is actually closer to that of an outsider like say Steve Earle, rather long faded hippy aspirations.

He occasionally gets poetic as on ‘Where You Gonna Run To’, which finds him; “writing love letters in the middle of the night, writing to the girl you left so far behind, running with the boys doing only what boys do, living out a lie because you just cant face the truth.”