Tom Russell puts on a good show. He gets the audience clapping and singing along to songs which, when you examine them more closely, aren't that joyous.

The rip-roaring Haley's Comet, for example, which brought the second half to a climax, recounted the ironic demise of Bill Haley, "the man who invented rock'n'roll", forgotten in South Texas, "just a tired old man".

For an encore, he told the story of Scottish Mike singing the lovely old Irish song Carrickfergus every night in a Norwegian dockside bar and bringing all the hardened sailors there to tears.

He then sang Carrickfergus and followed it with The Road It Gives, The Road It Takes Away, a song partly about Scottish Mike.

This anthemic song, with guitar breaks reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen, is really a meditation on the cost to performers of their lives on the road.

However, shouting the names of dead country music heroes over the final choruses doesn't hide the heartbreaking tale in the second verse of losing your wife by being away so much.

Russell says his newest CD, Love And Fear, is a set of songs about the loves which have gone sour in his life.

One of these, Beautiful Trouble, sounded a little smug to me, while another featuring two people in love being like "a big fat crocodile" simply left me mystified.

However, most of his songs are much more accessible. He sings in a deep, throaty voice, accompanies himself on guitar and has a hot guitarist/mandolinist, Michael Martin, along to supply some acoustic pyrotechnics.

If the overall impression was of songs about men who had been unjustly overlooked, one has to wonder whether this says more about the performer than his subjects.

This wasn't the last night at the Hanbury - shows continue there for a couple of weeks. However, the evening's promoter, Mike Lance, assured me he has another, even better, venue lined up.

Visit www.gigs-brighton.com for more information.