Yes, Dan Stuart has braved Brexit Britain and lots of other parts of Europe to once again play on what his old compadre Chuck usually refers to as the Angry Island. Once again has Don Antonio Gramentieri along as his guitar foil.
But first it's time for me to see Trent Miller for the third time this year as he seems to be support act du jour for a certain kind of act. Thankfully, unlike the last time I saw Trent open for Tommy Hale, the audience pay attention to him and the soundman does a good job so we can hear and appreciate all the harmonies he sings with Graham Knight.
They open with Time Between Us, which is full of the heartbreak of another relationship turned sour. It's dark and almost despairing, yet not quite and sounds really good this time round.
How Soon Is Never is (as usual) a bitter, twisted good riddance to a lover you never want to see or speak to again. It includes some nicely picked guitar, while Trent and Graham's harmonies work well to get the angst across. Your Black Heart just rams home how much he wants to move on and get his life going without the ex-putting him through the wringer once more.
Lupita's Dream is slightly more up-beat and the two guitars work nicely to convey the dream state they are hoping for. It's like Gene Clark back on his farm looking for a new way forwards.
Days In Winter is a bit too chilly for a hot summer evening as the bleakness of the music is in contrast to the hot weather but it still sounds so much better than it did lost in the murky sound of the Tommy Hale gig a few weeks ago.
These Violent Years seems ever more pertinent for the times we live in with people being attacked simply for going to concerts. Tonight it's sung with a sort of sense of yearning and Trent's typically downbeat strumming.
Pictures Of A Different World is about as upbeat as they get and now has a familiarity to it that makes it feel like an old friend: a song that needs to be heard live for certain. They close with Fear Of Flyin' to keep Trent's air of depression as he embraces his own paranoia and fears. It's - as ever - a good way to end the set and they get generous applause from the packed basement before Trent goes off to have some Pizza upstairs. Well, what else would an Italian musician want after he's played?
After a short break, on came Dan Stuart on acoustic guitar and vocals and Don Antonio Gramentieri on electric guitar. They opened with a very laid back version of You Couldn't Get Arrested, which encouraged quite a few people to sing along and at the end I heard one guy said he could go home happy now! Yes it did sound pretty damn good.
Elena was as bitter as Dan could make it as Don Antonio's guitar seemed to colour in the angst in the lyrics. Dan lets us know just how much he wishes Elena was his. Last Blue Day is plaintive and also very laid back; almost as if he's ready to end it all but decided to write another song instead.
By this point Dan is chatting between songs and making sure we know which bit of his peripatetic life the songs are about. He stays in Mexico for The Whores Above after a short introduction to let us know that it is about where he lives in Mexico City. It's salacious without being too gratuitous.
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Dan then takes us down to the beach with him for Zipolite, which has some of Don Antonio's most sun-kissed playing. It feels like a stroll along a beach, only this is a song about how the hippy dream so often goes wrong and as they story un-folds Dan sounds angrier at the hippy with his machete sitting near the beach.
All Over You marks the point in the set when Dan has some trouble with his guitar and so plays the song almost totally acoustic. It doesn't take the sound guy long to sort the problem and get us back to the great sound he provided all night long.
I wish I could say what the next two songs were, but my notes are a mess and unfortunately at the end of the gig someone took the set list before Dan was able to take a picture of it to send me, but needless to say the songs went down very well.
Dan then put smiles on the faces of almost the entire audience including the women he asked to stop talking when they played Keith Can't Read. Inevitably had almost everyone singing along to the "Ain't no pictures in this book" chorus. Damn, it sounds great stripped back like this.
Zombie For Love was next and was slowed down to an almost zombie-like crawl as everyone shouted out the chorus as we were all Zombies once more. He sounded a little bothered that he had to play a different set on the second show he was playing at Aces & Eights on the Saturday night.
Dan then took us back to New York for the slightly nostalgic Old Chief that had some wonderfully rueful guitar playing going on as well.
It was really great to hear them take on Gravity Talks and play it like it should always have been, as stripped down as this version was. Son, though, it was time for Dan to get good and angry on Gringo Go Home: a vivid tale of how he was given the traditional welcome of immigrants the world over in asking why they are there and is he on the run and if so what from.
He then closed with another song that I couldn't figure out from my notes and that I didn't recognise. However, it was wl above par and it brought to a close another damn fine Dan Stuart solo set.
Although they never left the stage at the end of the set, the place erupted and he was forced to play one more song and chose to play the song that had the loudest request so they closed with a cool sing along through The Little Things In Life. That guaranteed everyone left with a smile on their face at the end of another super cool Dan Stuart show.
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