a record deal with a blues label that did not work out, the band toured across Europe in May 2002, for which they played with future Dakota drummer Mick Nelson, James Irving, previously of unsigned Lincoln band Thunder Monkey joined the band in August 2002, prior to the band getting re-signed. Trimble would later go on to comment that the band found performing on the blues circuit restricting as the audiences, who were mostly in their 50s, had a very defined idea of what the genre was, and when performing their own songs they would often have promoters coming up to them saying "You can't play that! That's not blues!" and described the scene as being "a bit cabaret". Bartup revealed that prior to recruiting Irving, they had to use session drummers much older than themselves who they had to pay to rehearse and also described the blues circuit as "all sort of Blues Brothers and guys in pork pie hats". The band first signed a publishing deal with EMI subsidiary Heavenly Records, after the band had sent a demo to the Heavenly Social venue in Nottingham which was owned by the label, and the label founder Jeff Barrett went to see the band supporting Wilko Johnson. Following a bidding war between roughly 30 record companies that was described as "the A&R scramble of the century", which involved an infamous packed gig at the Dublin Castle in Camden, being flown over to the US to meet with record company executives, and a gig where the bosses of every major American record label turned up, the band also signed a record deal with Heavenly partly because "he (Barrett) was the one guy from a record company who didn’t bother taking us out for lunch, he just took us around to his office and we got absolutely hammered till about three in the morning listening to soul records". The band then re-located to Oxford, where they recruited Charly Coombes (brother of Supergrass' Gaz and Rob Coombes) on keyboards for live duties, who subsequently joined full-time during recording sessions for the first studio album. The band released their debut single, "Such A Fool", as a limited edition 7" in April 2003. This was followed up by the six-track live EP 05/03 (recorded May 2003) in September 2003, a decision which was influenced by the fact they were first noticed on the strength of