Yorkshire folk

But Kate is delighted that she has been compared to the country star, with one critic calling her ‘the English Dolly Parton’. “I adore Dolly, she’s proper fab! I was over the moon with that comparison,” beams Kate. “Everyone goes on about Madonna being the iconic female artist with longevity and the ability to reinvent herself, but Dolly was doing all that long before.

“She’s tough, she has a great business head and the best thing is her amazing voice. She still sings like she could as a teenager, it doesn’t often happen that someone keeps their voice like that. She’s grounded in traditional music and loves it with a passion. She’s a real inspiration.”

The ‘English Dolly’ is the latest title bestowed on Kate, also known as ‘the Barnsley Nightingale’ and the queen of British contemporary folk. Her Yorkshire roots have a strong pull on her music, whether she’s singing ancient folk songs or her own material. Earlier this summer she brought her current UK tour to Bradford and in September she’s performing in York. Kate is also making a new album, after taking time out to have her first baby. “I meant to do an album last year but ran out of time before my daughter was born. Hopefully it will be out September time,” she says.

By her own admission, Kate is a baby-faced slip of a girl who’s still asked to prove she’s old enough to buy wine at her local supermarket. But, with a career spanning nearly two decades and countless awards and albums under her belt, she’s a leading light on the contemporary folk scene.

She has collaborated with everyone from Idlewild’s Roddy Woomble to Ronan Keating. Even if you’re not familiar with her back catalogue, chances are you’ll have heard her sweet version of The Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society, the theme tune to TV sitcom Jam And Jerusalem.

The Yorkshire folk songs she was brought up on continue to colour her work. Her 2009 album Sweet Bells, a compilation of festive songs traditionally sung in Kate’s native South Yorkshire, re-created the hearty tradition of community singing, featuring old songs such as Poor Old Horse, Serving Girl’s Holiday and The Miner’s Dream Of Home.

Kate enjoys breathing new life into songs. “I’ve collected old ballad books over the years, I look through them and find fantastic gems hidden in the pages,” she says. “Often they don’t have tunes anymore, or only half a song is there. I love writing a new tune so a song can be sung again, or re-writing and re-moulding it, but still telling the story. It feels like you’re setting the songs free, sending them out into the world again to be heard, sung and passed about again.

“Folk songs are songs about people and their lives, what they do, where they go. I loved the album a few years ago by The Streets, to me that was modern- day folk music. Every song told part of the same story so if you listened to the album from start to finish you found out a bit more.”

She adds: “My songwriting is very rarely about myself, it’s nearly always about other people or fictitious characters. I write late at night when there’s no-one around, I sit with my guitar and plonk around and sometimes a song starts to form.”

Kate, 35, grew up with music in her blood. Her musician parents toured with their ceilidh band, taking Kate, sister Emma and brother Joe with them, and she learned piano, fiddle and guitar from a young age. “My parents were always playing and singing, story songs were our bedtime stories, they kept us quiet on long journeys. They’re my favourite kind of songs. They were written to pass on stories and gossip from the next village or wherever,” she says.

“They’re songs about real people and emotions, that’s why many of them are incredibly moving.

“They’re like mini films, you know? They set up characters and you find out who they love, who they want to love, where they’re going and who they meet. By the end you feel you’ve had a journey with them.”

Kate joined folk bands The Poozies and Equation, also featuring Seth Lakeman, then got her break with debut solo album, Hourglass, in 1997. She went on to release albums including Sleepless, Little Lights, Heartlands, Awkward Annie and Sweet Bells.

“Every record I’ve made hasn’t had a planned sound as such – all we know at the start is what songs we will do,” she says. “It’s my music, it’s me singing the songs I’ve written and found. My expectations are always the same – make the record how I want to make it and hope that people like it. Anything after that is a bonus.”

While her roots are firmly in folk, Kate occasionally steps outside the scene. In 2006 she joined Ronan Keating for 2006 single All Over Again, which reached No. 6.

She says. “Now and again I get asked to be part of exciting things like Jennifer Saunders’ Jam And Jerusalem or children’s animation Jack Frost, or the song with Ronan. It doesn’t distract from what I do.”