MIKE Gale is an unlikely musician. By his own admission he is shy and melancholy and avoids the spotlight. Yet his music has the power to move the soul.

Playing under the name Co-Pilgrim, his soaring Americana is upbeat, moving and tender. Redolent of dusty prairies, vast Western skies and shimmering horizons, it was actually born among the rolling downs of Hampshire.

“I’m quiet, melancholy and quite pessimistic,” he says with disarming honesty.

“But I have always loved writing songs, and being on stage is completely different to normal life, where I’m a bit of a freak with my head turned to the ground.

“On stage I just get up and sing and know I can do it.”

Mike first came to our attention as the frontman of the band Black Nielson, becoming an adoptive member of the Oxford scene through acclaimed annual sets at the county’s Truck music festival. The festival’s co-founder, fellow Americana lover Joe Bennett of the band Dreaming Spires, is an old friend and features as a regular member of his backing band – his distinctive slide guitar adding a tantalising flavour of the American West to his wide-screen country.

“This started off as a solo project but gradually more people have got involved,” he says. “Now it has become a band.”

As well as Joe, he has former Black Nielson bandmates Andy Reaney on bass and Tom Wenzel on drums. Other musicians come and go as he, and they, please.

“I wouldn’t be able to do it without them,” he says. “I’d rather stay in the background. Joe is a musical force and is in it for the foreseeable future. I’ve been playing with Andy for 18 years, and Tom... well, he is just crazy!

“I’m so lucky to work with them all. If I didn’t have them these would just be boring acoustic songs.”

Mike’s self-deprecating charm is refreshing in an industry dominated by overblown egos. So why did he strike out as a solo artist? “I didn’t want to be in a band situation,” he says. “But I am happy for it to stay like this as I don’t want to go back to playing gigs by myself. People don’t listen when you’re playing by yourself.

“My first album was quite miserable, and people don’t listen to a guy playing miserable songs, especially as I don’t have much stage persona.”

It’s untrue, of course, but endearing nonetheless.

On Saturday they play Modern Art Oxford, performing songs from stunning new album A Fairer Sea, Mike’s first since 2007’s Pucker Up Buttercup.

The idea for the album came from a session with Mike’s Belgian friends Sharko, and features violinist Emma Maurice, guitarist Teuk Henri, drummer Julien Paschal and keys player Matt Cha.

Musically, Co-Pilgrim references The Byrds, The Beatles and Sparklehorse. But there is a bigger influence. “I’ve never been able to get away from The Beach Boys,” he says. “Since the first time I heard them they have shadowed everything I’ve done. “I got into alt-country, though, by listening to Sparklehorse. I love the images the music conjures up and have always found the open spaces of America more appealing than the fields of Hampshire.”

The album was produced by Joe Bennett, and another Oxford face, Mark Gardener of Ride, and put together at Cumnor’s Cold Room Studios. Gardener even added his own backing vocals.

“It was terrific to work with Mark as he’s such a lovely bloke,” says Mike. “He let us stay at his house and made us feel totally at home – it even had his old Rickenbacker on the wall.”

It was certainly a more auspicious meeting of minds than their introduction at an early Truck festival, almost 10 years ago.

“I was in a bad state,” he laughs. “Joe asked me to go onto the stage and turn a smoke machine on and I ran into a bunch of equipment in front of 4,000 people just as Mark was just starting a song. Now he’s producing us!”

Saturday’s MOA show will see Mike supported by acoustic troubadour Owen Tromans and Americana folkster Billy T’rivers.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he says. “It’s a lot more civilised and smells nicer than most of the places I’ve played. And we’ll play the album from start to finish.”

Although the album has only just been released, Mike already has enough material for the next.

So can he see himself cheering up for it? “Not at all!” he laughs. “I really enjoy writing sad songs. It’s easier than pop. I can just sit for a few hours and go into a trance and write miserable stuff. I don’t know where it comes from, though. After all, I don’t walk around miserably all the time.

“Sometimes I’m quite cheery!”