Exactly a month after headlining the Cornbury Festival with the Rodless Faces, Ian McLagan was back on stage in very different surroundings. He opened his A Guy Walks Into a Bar tour at Oxford’s Bullingdon Arms, back to performing solo on keyboards after his spell alongside Ronnie Wood and Mick Hucknall.

A bar, of course, is what many will associate with The Faces, a great live band too often remembered for drunken mayhem rather than their music. McLagan has in many ways become the keeper of the flame. They were not only a band who could give The Who and The Rolling Stones a run for their money, The Faces had both Rod Stewart and, in the late Ronnie Lane, one of our most under-rated songwriters.

Starting the set with Hello Old Friend, McLagan told us he had once performed the song for Lane after multiple sclerosis had put his old bandmate in a wheelchair. His excellent versions of Lane’s songs Debris, Glad and Sorry and Itchycoo Park, with McLagan explaining all its references to Oxford (“Over Bridge of Sighs”, “Under dreamin’ spires” among others), were among the evening’s highlights.

The show is, in fact, almost as much about McLagan telling stories of his time with the Small Faces, Billy Bragg and years of non-stop touring as about his music. Sadly, there were no anecdotes about his time with the Stones and Dylan, though you suspect he has enough material to keep him going for three world tours.

Many may have been disappointed that so many of the songs were either still unrecorded or came from his solo albums. If you wanted the hits, you needed to be at Great Tew, it seemed.

For all his chirpiness, the theme of the songs from his Never Say Never album is loss, following the death of his wife Kim. For much of the show McLagan appeared alone on keyboards, but the appearance of bass player Jon Notarthomas, from the Bump Band which McLagan formed in Texas where he now lives, allowed him change tempo.

I’ve seen Mac perform before 100,000 people at Wembley Stadium. It is a measure of this old rocker’s love of his trade that he looked just as happy to play for not many more than 100 in the Bully.