Commuters' favourite swaps busking for the big time with recording deal

But now he has hit the jackpot, landing a record deal with a Grammy award-winning producer.

He was spotted singing and playing guitar outside a shopping centre by an assistant to Martin Levan, who has worked with legendary rockers Jethro Tull, Rod Stewart and Pink Floyd as well as Cat Stevens.

The assistant tracked down his songs on MySpace. Levan was impressed and offered Mr Mackay the chance to record an album at his state-of-the-art studio in rural North Wales.

The busker, 29, who moved to London two years ago and lives in a one-bedroom flat in Tooting, will release a compilation of his own songs, titled Out Along The Wire, next Monday. The album has already received rave reviews in the music press and he has been compared variously to Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton and Jeff Buckley. In remarkable contrast to serenading Kingston commuters with classics such as All Along The Watchtower and I Shot The Sheriff, he has been supporting chart star Rumer and pop-gospel singer Beth Rowley at venues across the capital in the run-up to the album launch.

He said today: "When I heard of the four-star review in Guitarist magazine last week, I was outside Kingston station in sub-zero temperatures. It was so cold I could hardly feel my fingers.

"I could not have imagined a year ago that I was going to be played on Radio 2, or my album would be on sale in HMV.

"This has been my dream since I fell in love with Eric Clapton's music aged 14 and I still can't believe it seems to be coming true."

During recording, Levan, who was the original sound designer* behind many Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals and won a Grammy for the Broadway album of Cats, teamed the busker with top session musicians who have played with Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, Phil Collins and the Scissor Sisters.

He said: "I think the album is quite thrilling, really exciting stuff. Tristan is quite a character and I thought his songs would touch people. I find whenever anyone listens to them, they get it - even if it is not their type of music. He is a fantastic talent."

* We previously referred in this piece to Martin Levan being the 'original producer behind many Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals'. In fact, he was the sound designer. He was also the producer of many cast albums of the musicals.

Mellow huskiness of a new housewives' choice

Review
Out along the wire
Tristan Mackay (Battered Hat)

Tristan Mackay obviously has ambitions far beyond collecting the coins of passing shoppers - he wants to be sitting alongside Adele on the elite racks for million sellers at Tesco.

His best hope for a mainstream hit is probably Last Love, a string-drenched piano ballad that out-weeps James Blunt. His mellow voice and its tiny crackle of huskiness slips all too easily into a lovesick falsetto, so the housewives could have a new softy to edge aside their albums by Blunt and the other James, Morrison.

Mackay stands apart thanks to his blues background, so songs such as I Found You and Million Little Things are enlivened with electric licks - though generally he's caressing, not wrestling, his guitar. Lonely by Myself mimics the bluesy boogie of Eric Clapton's Lay Down Sally, while another clear resemblance is with John Mayer, the younger American guitar whizz whose smoothness has finally made fretboard mastery palatable to the ladies.

Mackay has one foot in the new world and one in the old, going fully retro on the old-timey acoustic swing of Wherever You Lay Your Head, while he gives his voice more of a workout with the Jeff Buckley stylings of Fire and Flame.

As these comparisons suggest, his influences are almost too audible. It may take him another album or two to be completely himself. But he's done enough to keep him off the streets.

David Smyth