Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks

There's a Tom Waits song called "The Piano Has Been Drinking" on Dan Hicks's new album. It details, to absurd comic effect, the shortcomings of a performer's nightmare venue, where the bouncer is a Sumo wrestler, the carpet needs a haircut, and the spotlight looks like a prison break. For a while, it seemed as if this lively Irish music pub, down the street from a lap-dancing club in Moseley Road, might bring the song to real, throbbing, life.

On only his second date of a longish British tour, the 61-year-old Californian singer-songwriter and bandleader looked quite bemused by his surroundings. Casting a gimlet eye towards the lighting desk, Hicks attempted to get a ferociously livid spot that made his guitarist look "like a lobster", turned down. "We just kinda need to know he's there," he said, in a trademark deadpan drawl. Later, announcing another song from the album, he told us that on record it featured a duet with Bette Midler: "Of course, I'm not sure she's going to show up tonight. Although, you never know, maybe she's waiting in the car park right now." Oh, how we laughed.

By the end, though, everything was fine, despite Hicks's pique at the lack of air-conditioning. After the encore, as the band exited through the fire door to the back lane outside, the audience went wild for more, chanting "We want Dan!" over and over. But Dan wasn't doing any more, as he'd hinted earlier. "Once I've shot my wad, that's it," he'd declared. When the two female backing singers, the Lickettes, mimed mock outrage, he added: "It's OK, you can say that. It's, like, in usage."

Dan Hicks has the very rare gift of being both clever and funny. Nearly 35 years ago, when as the drummer with The Charlatans he was already a veteran of the San Francisco rock scene, Hicks swapped his sticks for a guitar and formed the Hot Licks, an ironic Western Swing string band. Mixing comic songs full of Joycean wordplay with "hot" acoustic music, the group became a critical hit before Hicks tired of the pressure and broke it up. Now, belatedly, he's back, with Beatin' the Heat (released on Surfdog), his first studio album in a quarter-century - "Yeah, we're a real record-cutting machine," he joked between songs - featuring guest appearances by Waits, Midler, Elvis Costello and Ricky Lee Jones. The album is good, too, but in concert (or even in pub) Hicks and the Licks - guitar, string bass, violin and the Lickettes - are something else, raising one long, continuous smile of beaming glee from everyone in the house. Catch them if you can.

Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks play Lemontree, Aberdeen (01224 642 230) tomorrow; The Ferry, Glasgow (0141-353 8000) on Wednesday; the Live Theatre, Newcastle (0191-232 1232) on Thursday; Rescue Rooms, Nottingham (0115-958 8484) on Friday; and the Borderline, London (020-8534 4444) on Saturday