Alan Clayton and The Dirty Strangers back at The Chichester Inn

Alan’s album Hunter’s Moon coincided pretty much with the new Rolling Stones release Hackney Diamonds featuring his great mate Keith Richards.

The Dirty Strangers launched their album with a gig at the Hundred Club – and it’s the same line-up – with support from Soho Dukes and Kaedan Swin – that they will be offering at the Chichester Inn on Saturday, March 9 at 8pm (tickets £15 from the venue).

“We should have a good year coming up,” Alan said. “The album did really well at the end of last year. In Vive Le Rock we were in the top 50 albums of the year and in Classic Rock we were sixth out of everybody.” And as Alan points out, they were actually above The Stones in that particular reckoning: “It's a pity it wasn't reflected in sales but it was certainly reflected in people phoning in.”

And the reason it did so well? “It's a good album! It is good raw rock'n'roll. It is just stuff that is timeless but it has also got a sense of humour. You can't take yourself too seriously, can you! We've got lots of gigs lined up for this year and we're hoping to get some more and to do some festivals. But we've got gigs lined up until the end of the year and now we've got a new single coming out, La La La I Couldn't Care Less, a new single from the album. My niece Holly is 14 and she was 13 then and she drummed on it. She came over to my studio and she can play the drums. We just had a jam and I came up with a tune. When she left I wrote the words and really it's just about a young girls attitude!”

Other recent highlights include playing a gig in Oslo in Norway in January: “I just got invited over there. There were two authors that hired this old cinema where they wanted to do a presentation about the books that they had written. They were both books about The Rolling Stones. It was really cold over there but it was just a great experience. I've never ever played Norway before so it's just a great thing to do.”

One of the books was about Nellcôte, a name instantly recognisable to Rolling Stones fans as the French villa which served as the recording location for The Stones’ 1972 album Exile on Main St: “The other book was about The Rolling Stones from 1963 to 1970 which was really specific. The book had the chronology of all their releases and their adverts. The bloke that wrote it must have taken ages to put it all together but I think that's the fans for you. They don't want to do something like that for profit. They just do it for the absolute love of it. And the book about Nellcôte was huge, 400 pages!”

Alan hasn't spoken to his mate Keith Richards since Keith turned 80 last December: “I have been too busy with my own album. I will ring him up but they will be starting rehearsals for their tour just now. But we've just been too wrapped up in our own little Hunter’s Moon world!”