This week I’ve been recording a brand new single for the Coronation, to be released in May. We also recorded a video on the same day. It was a fantastic feeling being back in this studio with producer and recording engineer, Chris Pepper. We last recorded here in 2020, two weeks before lockdown, where I made my vinyl for ‘Rings of Saturn’ and ‘Anam Cara.’ I can’t wait to share my new song with you, and the inspiration behind it.

The first time I visited Glasgow was in 2003 hosting journalists for a travel company I was working for. I ventured out to a small underground music venue called the ‘Cellar Bar’ and a singer I hadn’t heard of before was performing. It was Kate Rusby. I was already familiar with the music of Glaswegian singer Eddi Reader, so I asked at the box office if she was similar. The woman on the door said ‘Well you’re in luck. Eddi is here tonight and they’re singing a duet.’ It’s serendipitous moments like this that have continued to inspire me and fuel my own journey as a folk singer.

What Can a Song do to You? is a poem written by Molly Drake, the mother of late folk musician Nick Drake, set to music by The Unthanks who sang at Shrewsbury Folk Festival this bank holiday weekend. Under a starlit sky, the audience was spellbound. “Can it make with each note such an ache in your throat?” asks Molly. Certainly this was my experience listening to Judy Collins on the main stage on the last day of the festival. As she opened her set with Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now’ a woman rushed over to me and asked me if I was ok! She must have seen the tears welling up in my eyes. I later heard that a woman wept for the whole hour of Judy’s performance.

I’ll be setting sail to the Isle of Wight for a concert on Saturday 3rd September and performing a solo show with guitar at the beautiful thatched 18th century church, St Agnes in West Wight. The church lies beneath Tennyson Down in the beautiful Freshwater Bay, a mile away from Farringford where Tennyson lived for 40 years and wrote his famous poem ‘Maud.’ Tennyson’s poems have inspired me more than once, with the setting of the ‘Lady of Shalott’ to music, and ‘Crossing the Bar’.