Huey Morgan, the original Fun Lovin’ Criminal, is bringing his band to The Lens Studio in Portsmouth

Their first two albums went platinum, and the band found themselves more successful here in the UK than back home in the US.

However, the trio last released an album in 2010, and aside from festivals and the occasional tour, it seemed like that was it, with Morgan now focussed on his popular Saturday morning Radio 6Music show.

But in the past couple of years, Morgan left the band he helped start amid bad blood with co-founder Fast and current drummer Frank Benbini.

With those two now playing under the FLC moniker, much to Morgan’s clear anger (it has played out across social media – with Morgan repeatedly calling them “frauds” and a “covers band”), he has decided to come out of his self-described ‘retirement’ to reclaim his songs – and he’s playing with his new band here in Portsmouth next week.

When we speak, the band have just made their live debut with back-to-back gigs at London’s prestigious 100 Club and at Cheltenham Jazz Festival.

The New York native is still buzzing: “They’re two very distinctly different types of crowds, but it’s really cool to have that dichotomy when you play because it reminds me of how we used to walk into a situation sometimes and I had to pull it out of the hat.

“It was good to be able to flex those muscles again, bro.”

And he’s excited to highlight who’s in this new band: “The original DJ in the fun loving criminals, Mateo DiFontaine plays Rhodes (keyboard) and DJs and kicks off the sequences.

"My dear friend King from New York City is playing bass on this project, he's a fantastic cat, and then we’ve got two English dudes, a guy named Ben Gonzalez on the trap kit and Adrian Gautrey on the organ/keyboard and a little bit of guitar. We got it going on!”

It was also his first time playing the 100 Club, as FLC took off so fast in the early days that they bypassed it.

"I'd never played there before, when we first started playing here in the ’90s our first gig was at the Camden Underworld, that was the only small joint we played in London. After that we were at Shepherd's Bush Empire or The Forum or something – we jumped from playing to a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand straight away. We were on a major label and had all that behind us and whatnot...”

For Morgan, putting the new band together and returning to playing live has been an act of reclaiming the band’s songs.

“I'm playing the songs that I wrote, my stories, my life, man. The Fun Lovin’ Criminals, for lack of a better reference, we broke up, but those other guys didn't get the memo, right?

"So they're out there pretending to be from New York – none of the guys are from New York. They’re two guys from England and a guy from Maryland, right? I figured these are my stories, so I'm just I'm telling them again, man, and people are digging it, plus I’ve got some new stuff I'm putting together.

“I’ve got a new album coming out pretty soon and that's gonna be pretty interesting as well. So I'm playing a couple of those songs, bookended with some things that people like. I'm not about to pull a pull a jazz odyssey in front of a festival crowd!” he says referencing the classic rock mockumentary This is Spinal Tap.

"I had pretty much retired (from playing), there was such a bad taste in my mouth after I was kind of betrayed by these two other cats in my band. They’re absolute scumbags, man. If that's the kind of situation I put myself in to be creative musically, ‘screw that’, I said to myself, and took some years off.”

However, while Morgan is happy to talk about the situation at first, he is obviously keen to talk about other things

“I don't want to focus on them because it gives their whole BS situation oxygen. Basically I stepped away because I felt really bothered by it and I didn't want to open up my creative self for a long time, I was bruised, I suppose.”

But now he’s very much back in the saddle again. “About a year ago I was talking with a friend in Nashville and we started making music again. It was like a slow build. Once bitten, twice shy, I suppose…"

While not playing music, Morgan had been focusing on a different creative outlet – writing.

“I'm a writer – I've been writing stories, songs, my whole life, so what I've been doing when I haven't been playing music, I've just been writing. I'm putting out a couple of books next year too.

“And I was happy doing that (writing). Then right before Christmas, my wife, who's also my manager, found this email in her junk folder from this guy Kevin (Fitzgerald) and there was a name: ‘Alan McGee’. She's like: ‘Wait, I know that name!’

“It turned out it was Alan McGee,” the Creation Records founder and music business maverick who discovered Oasis, “and his business partner Kevin and they were interested in having a sit down with me and seeing what my plans were – if I wanted to make music again and perform again.

"The other two guys in the band Fun Lovin’ Criminals asked Alan to manage them and Alan laughed: 'I mean, why would I manage the sidemen? Where's Huey?' So that's pretty much what got him looking for me and then, right before Christmas we had a nice meeting and we decided we're gonna get back at it.”

Working with the band he’ll take on the road, Huey’s got a new album well under way.

”We have most of the songs done, we have demos and stuff like that, it's just a matter of recording and we might be working with Youth, who's a great producer. I'm looking forward to that. It's all so crazy, man. I'm 55 and I feel like a lot of a lot of wind is at my back with this kind of this project, and it's really amazing. I'm super-grateful for it.

"It's one of those things where it's like a gift from God. Yeah, I was a rockstar a couple of decades ago, but it's one of those things where it's just like really cool to be able to go out and play my stories and my music again, it's really interesting and cool.”

With regards to the books, he is, as ever, bristling with confidence.

"They’re pretty good, I have to say. I'm working on a couple of projects, one of them's fictional, one of them's non-fiction. I don't want to get into it too much because I don't want to give the bag away and have cats going on ChatGPT and stealing my idea, you know!

”I can say the non-fiction book is a limited autobiography, about a certain period of my life that's extremely interesting and action-packed…

“We’ve just signed with a publisher so that should be out next year.”

After all this time, how does he feel about the prospect of hitting the road again?

“I think it's going to be really fun. We're doing a bunch of other shows this summer and we're really looking forward to them if these first two shows are any inclination. It’s going to be great for the people who are coming out to seeing these songs interpreted a little bit more multidimensionally than they were before because we have some really amazing musicians playing in this band.”

Huey Morgan plays The Lens Studio in Portsmouth Guildhall on Friday, July 12. For tickets click here: ticketweb.uk.

The show has been moved from The Moonshine Club, all previously sold tickets remain valid for the new venue.