Mark Harrison is back at Bognor Regis's South Downs Music Festival

With the Regis Centre still unavailable, Mark will be giving one of the marquee concerts instead. Friday, September 20 sees Fred's House and Mark take to the stage, and then on Saturday, September 21 Gerry Colvin will be supported by Olivia Stevens. Tickets are £12 per evening or £20 for both evenings. Both evening concerts start at 7.30pm. For Bognor, Mark will be offering a duo concert with double bass player Charles Benfield, with whom he goes back to the start of his musical career: “I did the first album in 2010 and Charles made that album with me. I'd met him in 2009 and he's been with me since I started. I worked with various people. I didn't set out to do what I'm doing. I had no aims at all. I just wanted to do some playing and I met some people who wanted to play with me. For a while we had up to a six-piece band but since 2017 it has been the trio most of the time. I can operate in any line-up – solo, duo or trio with the default being the three of us but really it just depends on the setting and location and what the organisers want and in this case it's the duo they wanted.

“We have some songs that we only do as the two of us. I've recorded 99 songs in 15 years and there will certainly be a 100th but I didn't actually know it was 99 until I counted them all up but there are some songs that I don't do solo and I don't do as a trio but I just do as the duo. Charles has a very unique style.”

Mark and Charles performed together a couple of years ago at the South Downs Music Festival: “And one of the distinguishing features we have is that Charles is a very rhythmic player. He does a lot of slapping on the double bass but the songs themselves are about the 99.9 per cent of life that other songwriters don't write about. I've never been interested in myself as a subject when I write or in my own inner world – whatever ghastly thing that is. I do the subjects that other people don't do. I have a lot of songs about what most people see as the experiences of their lives and I have a few songs about people in the history of blues music. I don't really do blues music but I have these songs about blues people.”

As for avoiding his own inner life: “I'm not an attention-seeking performer. I'm only interested in songs and delivering them well. That’s the only interest for me. It's not about me. My music points out rather than points in, and that’s not often the case. In music, most people are one way or another ego maniacs and you have to be to an extent with social media but social media was not really built for laconic people from the Midlands like me.”

Mark admits he has to use social media because of the business he is in: “But it consumes you in a way that you can't quite comprehend. It eats away at your soul. If people take a break from social media, they realise quite rapidly how much better they feel. When you go into it you mentally stick a peg on your nose so that you don't smell it, but you still will, and sadly I do have to use it for promoting my music on what they call the socials.”