Clive Palmer came to Scotland for a week in 1962 and stayed for four years. When he left to travel to India it was with the same blithe spirit with which he'd stuck out his thumb to head north in the first place. In between times, he'd made an album with a band. It hadn't made much impact, he felt. He wanted to see more of the world. So it was time to move on. Except, the band was the Incredible String Band and by the time Palmer got back to the UK, they'd made an impact all right, as well as a handful of eagerly-bought albums.

The fascination the group's music exerts remains almost as strong today. When Palmer's colleagues, Robin Williamson and Mike Heron, got back together for a reunion concert in Glasgow two years ago, ISB fans travelled from every continent to be there.

Now, Palmer and Williamson, pictured right, have reconvened, with a CD in the shops, At the Pure Fountain, and a concert during Glasgow's Big Big World festival forming part of a UK tour.

Not that Palmer ever saw himself as ISB's Pete Best figure. ''Nah,'' he chimes from his cottage in Brittany. ''There was never any animosity. When I left they were beginning to move in a direction that I found difficult to follow. Those were free and easy days. We were young and probably too far ahead of our time.''

Being ahead of his time was nothing new to Palmer. In the Victorian fifties, as he calls them, he was an art student, living in a deserted building on the Thames's South Bank, doing pavement drawings by day, playing blues, country and folk songs on his banjo in a coffee bar by night.

After leaving art college, Palmer headed for Paris with guitarist Wizz Jones. They busked, lucratively, on the streets and met Glasgow folk-singing legend, the late and unforgettable Alex Campbell. When he arrived in Edinburgh on a whim in 1962, he almost immediately made friends with Williamson, Archie Fisher, Bert Jansch, and the other pioneers of the Scottish folk, blues and beyond movement. As Robin & Clive, he and Williamson worked steadily, often filling in for The Corries, doing daily traditional music shows on the Edinburgh Fringe, and forging the eclectic hybrid that would become the Incredible String Band.

With Heron aboard to give them the classic

old-timey string band

line-up of fiddle, guitar, and banjo, they started their own folk club on Sauchiehall Street, not for nothing called the Incredible Folk Club. The all-night Saturday sessions there became, briefly, a haven for all sorts of characters - and many of them; on the first night, Palmer recalls that they turned away 500 customers. A victim of its success, the club's constant flirting with fire regulations saw it closed down after a few months. When he came back from India, Palmer formed the Famous Jug Band, then COB (Clive's Original Band), with whom he recorded the now eminently collectible Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Heart, named after singer Mick Bennett's Glaswegian-Jewish background. A spell with Pentangle and several years spent teaching in Cornwall followed, before Palmer settled in a quiet corner of Brittany where he makes smallpipes and lives without the intrusion of TV,

radio, newspapers or a CD player. ''I'm going to have to get one now that I'm recording again,'' he concedes.

The offer to make a CD with Williamson came out of the blue. ''We'd seen each other from time to time over the years, so we hadn't completely lost touch, and it just felt so natural playing together again. The recording was simple: we just walked in, sat down and sang the songs we wanted to sing. Robin added some arrangements later.''

Their live concerts will be similarly simple affairs, featuring, like the album, a mixture of traditional songs, Hank Williams ballads, music hall songs, and blues. Just like old times, but with a depth of experience gained over 33 years.

Well, maybe not quite like the old times, which, with Alex Campbell and Hamish Imlach around, could get pretty uproarious. Palmer, who had an ulcer a few years ago, now lives the abstemious life. ''The audience can get drunk if they like,'' he says. ''But after all this time, they should get to hear us at our best.''

Dave Allen

l Robin Williamson & Clive Palmer play the Old Fruitmarket tomorrow.