A couple of years after moving to Atlanta in the early Nineties, Joseph Arthur encapsulated the depressing daily grind of the musician unable to conceive surviving through any other means.

He was living in a box room on the lower floor of an apartment he shared with a prostitute, following the departure of his girlfriend. After another day edging closer to being destroyed by working in a record shop for minimum pay, he arrived home to an answer machine message from an unexpected voice.

"I left the music store in the typical headspace of 'can't do this much longer', fantasising over the criminal means by which I could put food on my table, he recalls. "I must have sat in my room listening to that message for an hour, reading meaning into each word."

The message, which has been the subject of all his least favourite interview questions ever since, was from Peter Gabriel, promising to call back with a view to signing Arthur.

"The streets were now transformed into funky yellow brick roads," he noticed. "The whores looked like angels and the bums like saints. I was lighting up the streets, all glow and wonder."

Several albums later, Arthur can count on a few more big hitters for references. Michael Stipe reckons he "writes from a very deep, intuitive place"

and Chris Martin rated In The Sun, from second album Come To Where I'm From, as the greatest song ever written.

Arthur's own appraisal of himself, as "the Rolf Harris of indie", is a more accurate reflection of the quirkiness he is best known for. Painting canvasses on stage during his shows allows Arthur to literalise the link between music and art.

"What surprised me about it was that I thought it would be something cool for my live show, but it turned into something that was really good for my painting," he reports of the attempt to make his live shows "more dynamic".

"What I paint depends on how I'm feeling. It might be what I'm seeing in the room but it could be anything."

Starts 8pm, Tickets £10, Call 01273 673311