Micky Greaney’s not your usual singer-songwriter. Indeed, it feels like you’re breaking the first law of musical classification to refer to him by that well-worn sobriquet.

True, Micky writes songs and he sings them, but any comparison with the likes of the dreaded James Blunt or David Gray begins and ends there.

If Micky wanted to compete with those two, he’d be called Michael Greeney and he’d wear tweed.

Micky Greaney’s a legend in Birmingham.

Fourteen years ago, he was a mainstay at Ronnie Scotts, here and in London. He fronted a 12-piece band with the passion of early Dexys Midnight Runners and released the classic album Little Symphonies For The Kids.

He’d even been on the cover of America’s Billboard magazine, hailed as one the next big things from the UK.

It was just a matter of time before he became a household name. And then, silence.

So began Micky Greaney’s wilderness years.

Off the radar but not forgotten, there were a few false starts along the way but these were not good times for Micky.

The loss of his father in 1997, battles with the bottle and M.E, failed relationships, bad music deals and the birth of his son, Theo, in 1999 all conspired to keep Micky out of the public eye.

For a few years, he just couldn’t write a song.

There were occasional gigs, but nothing focused enough to give hope for a proper revival.

Micky signed a development deal with uber-producer John Leckie, the man with the Midas touch who steered Simple Minds to stadiums and gave Muse their first taste of real success.

Five days at Abbey Road yielded nothing but more disillusionment for Greaney. All the experience gave him was a lasting distrust of the mainstream music industry.

In short, Micky may as well have had “cult” tattooed across his forehead.

All that was to change one bright morning in July last year when Micky woke up and sat in front of a battered baby grand piano, bought with the help of good friend Steve Coxon.

Suddenly the songs started pouring out of him again.

That same August, we were given a first glimpse of Micky’s new material when he played a low-key slot at Moseley Folk Festival, chumming up to stunning effect with former Pooka goddess Sharon Lewis. There’s footage up on YouTube as testament.

Hushed and utterly in the moment, it was a moment for celebration for all those who believed in Greaney’s powers and the reception he received was rapturous.

The journey comes full circle on Sunday when Micky ends his 14-year recording drought at an intimate gig at the Kitchen Garden Cafe, in Kings Heath, committing a live album of songs old and new to tape.

“It’s been too long,” he tells me. “I’ve got to get out and play.

“This is the first step for me, it’s a stepping stone. Recording a live album is the quickest way of getting it done and I’ll be making a calling card, something that can land on people’s desks and lead to bigger things.”

If Moseley Folk Festival is a true indication, Micky’s songs will also shine in a way completely different to the big band setting. For your £10 ticket price, you get a copy of the finished album when it’s ready.

“There’ll be some new stuff, some of the old material and stuff from the middle period that nobody’s heard,” explains Micky.

“The 10 best songs of the night will end up on the CD, but I’ll be singing more than that.”

Micky is certainly fired up. He speaks with a passion and confidence that, in a person with lesser talent, could be taken for arrogance.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve had this energy,” he confesses. “There’s no point in false modesty. If someone comes up to me and says: ‘You’re a really great songwriter’ it would be bullshit if I said I wasn’t.

“I know I’ve written some really timeless songs and I’ll say so. This has brought me plenty of detractors but that doesn’t affect me.

“You have to have confidence in what you’re doing.”

Micky does miss playing in a band and one of the first things on his list is to get another 12-piece outfit back on the road.

“That first big band really did the business for me,” he says. “They got me and my songs noticed. You can’t have success if people haven’t heard you.

“I can always get up and play my guitar and sing. I’ve played the Glee Club once a year like that.

“I really miss the old Ronnie Scott’s. Because I had the band, I was able to play there 24 times in four years. Anyone can play in a band though. What separates me is the quality of the song-writing.”

That’s why the band will always take Micky’s name.

“These are my songs and I know how they should sound,” he explains. “I’ll always be the boss. That’s not to say we won’t have fun. Playing with musicians you admire is always a pleasure.

“I turned down two record deals in the 1990s for political reasons,” he says.

“The advances weren’t big enough to support what I want to do. Someone offered me half a million dollars for the combined publishing and recording rights but I was adamant I wanted to use my own players.”

When you’re supporting a 12-piece band and paying all expenses, that money doesn’t go far.

Since those days, the last great hurrah of a record industry now brought to its knees by the power of the internet as a distribution and promotion tool, the whole business landscape has changed with labels happier to push back-catalogue product and promote just a handful of sure-fire proven winning artists.

Micky cites contemporaries who signed to labels, “went through the whole record company thing with all that machinery behind them” only to find themselves dropped when they didn’t sell enough copies of their second album.

“Now there’s not a massive amount of difference between us,” he says. “In a way, I’m ahead. I have 40 songs now that are all worthy of being top of any album. No filler.”

Micky also talks candidly about the times when he couldn’t write, particularly the last two-and-a-half years.

“I didn’t have it in me, I had nothing worthwhile to say.”

The experience of working at Abbey Road with one of Britain’s best producers seems to have it him especially hard.

While many would have relished the chance, it says a lot about Micky Greaney’s ambition that it knocked him for six.

Although he is unhappy at the way John Leckie and his manager treated him, trying to force him into a style he wasn’t happy with, he’s also honest enough to see that much of the fault was his own.

“When I went to Abbey Road I thought I had lots of material but once I was there I realised that I didn’t have an album.

“I really believe that every song on an album has to work to be there. An album has to be watertight, with no filler, if it has any chance of making a lasting impression.”

It’s quite clear that Micky has a lot of personal pride and very high standards.

“Things were going well,” he says of this time. “I’d got a new band together and we gelled and then I went to Abbey Road and everything went off the road.

“John Leckie gets 500 requests a year for production work but he can only physically make five albums.

“A lot of people weren’t best pleased with me when I said no to them. They saw me in the same mould as Richard Ashcroft or Thom Yorke but I didn’t want that.

“The recordings went badly and I quickly got out of the deal with Leckie, who wound up with Muse.

“I have to take some of it on the chin though and it certainly set me back but I don’t think I’d be writing such great songs now if I had followed it through.”

Micky’s at his most animated when he talks about his knew-found creative spark.

“I stayed quiet when I had to, but music is just pouring out of me now,” he says. “I don’t have to try. I fell in love again and started writing like crazy.”

Micky also uses the analogy of falling in love when describing how the muse returned to him and it’s clear that personal happiness and contentment are essential to his compositional power.

He’s not someone who writes well from a state of misery and Micky’s trademark lovesongs have the ring of truth that James Blunt et al will never have.

Unselfconscious and searingly honest, his best can silence a rowdy room, returning it to pin-drop hush.

“I blink and a song comes out, it really is a case of exercising my songwriting muscle. If I don’t use it, I lose it.

“My voice is now back to what it was too. I’m writing about such weird stuff now.”

So confident is Micky, he doesn’t even need a guitar or piano.

“I can be lying on the couch and a song will come to me fully formed, complete with words and chord structures.

“Songs present themselves as finished things. I just have to pick up my guitar and they’re there, ready to sing.”

Although Micky mourns the loss of Ronnie Scott’s, he sees new additions such as the Glee Club, Town Hall and Moseley Folk Festival as all being helpful.

In a characteristic moment of candour, he tells me: “Moseley Folk is fantastic and I saw a lot of acts over that weekend.

“I knew that I could do better than every single one of them with a band behind me.

“When that’s in place we’re going to demolish them,” he promises.

It’s all part of the process of Micky’s rebirth, not idle dissing or empty posturing.

“I know how that sounds,” he continues. “But I have to get into that frame of mind in order to do this.

“I have to have the arrogance in order to blow people’s minds. This is it. I have written the songs and I can hear the band playing them in my head.

“It’s amazing the paths that people’s lives take and I’m so grateful to be doing this again.

“It’s not just for me either. There’s an opportunity for anyone to jump on board with the band.

“I want to bring everything bang up to date now. That means killing the mySpace page which is out of date and launching a new website. That’s not just a marketing exercise. I want to tell people that this is where I’m at now.”

* Micky Greaney, Live Album Recording, Sunday, September 14.
The Kitchen Garden Café, 17 York Road, Kings Heath B14 7SA - 0121 443 4725.
Support: Dean O’Loughlin.
Tickets £10 including a CD copy of the Live Recording.