Luka Bloom: Moon Unit.

Luka Bloom plays the Tivoli Theatre on Thursday and the East Coast Blues & Roots Music Festival in Byron Bay on Saturday and Sunday.

Luka Bloom, 46-year-old younger brother of Irish superstar Christy Moore, chuckles at the familiarity with which he is greeted by some interviewers. His is a story that's always worth telling. Luka, real name Barry Moore, changed the moniker in 1987. The Christian name is adapted from Suzanne Vega's legendary song about child abuse, and the surname is taken from Leopold Bloom, the character in James Joyce's epic novel, Ulysses.

The Americans lapped it up and when he spread his strum to Europe and Australia, well, they both fell for him too. So much so his reworking of LL Cool J's I Feel Love bounded up the charts in '92 and catalysed a tour of sold-out theatres around the country. Ever since, he's been welcomed back with open arms.

Of course, not everything has gone exactly to plan. Despite three critically-acclaimed albums on Warners - the legendary The Acoustic Motorbike, Riverside and Turf - Warners dropped him in 1994, then fellow major Sony followed suit after 1998's Salty Heaven failed to sell enough to impress the notoriously chart-conscious company. More fool them. Luka decided enough was enough, hopped on the Web, started up his own site and label (www.lukabloom.com), and popped out a lovely album of covers, Keeper Of the Flame. Praised? Of course.

Better still is his first solo album for himself, Between the Mountain And The Moon, by far his best; a beautiful, modern, special updating of the folk and storytelling tradition that loses none of his trademark emotion and lyricism.

"I'm thrilled with it," he says. "Australia was the first country it was released in, and I'm so glad it was because the feedback has just been so positive. In fact, we've just released it in Ireland [remarkably, his home market is his most difficult market], and I feel very encouraged. Last year was quite remarkable for me because I set up the website, completed this record that I actually own and put in place a new structure for my working life. This year is the year I go on the road and see what happens.

"Everything is in place so I've just got to get out there now, do the shows, reacquaint myself with old friends and hopefully make a couple of new ones."

He's also ventured into the past in search of himself as Barry Moore. Luka fanatics have long bemoaned the fact that the three albums he recorded under his own name have been impossible to get hold off.

"In the case of two of the albums, the record companies had gone bust and in the third case, the record company were just complete assholes and wouldn't let me near the master tapes, so what I did was got my sound engineer to master a CD from really good quality, reasonably clean, straight vinyl, just to make those songs available."

The Barry Moore Years is available from his website and at his shows.

"It's another area of creativity that has been opened up to me by not having to justify my existence to a record company."

"I have to admit now that I used Keeper Of The Flame as a test case to see how this new independent world worked for me. I wanted to make a record that gave me a creative kick in the arse - I needed it - but also was one into which I didn't have a huge emotional input because I would have been really devastated if I'd done Between The Mountain And The Moon first and it hadn't worked out. As it turned out Keeper Of The Flame got such a positive reaction that it gave me great momentum to do this second one."

And for once the world swung with Luka. In America a new acoustic consciousness is beginning to infiltrate an industry that has been dominated by artifice and teen dreams for too long.

"In the 80s and 90s the phenomena of stadium music was all pervasive," Bloom says. "In the live arena stadium rock had an impact on the ability of more intimate venues to thrive and survive. I think that for a lot of people who love going to a live show, the experience of going to stadiums has proven to be somewhat shallow and unsatisfying. For that reason alone, people are being increasingly drawn to a more acoustic-oriented music.”