LANCASTER –born troubadour Angie Palmer is returning to an old favourite venue of hers next month – Kendal’s very own Bootleggers.
 

As someone who has, she says, been touring ‘pretty much constantly’ since her late teens, these dates mark a return to the UK for Angie, who now lives in France.
 

“We have a very back-to-basics life here which is very hard to find in the UK,” she explains, “I live right out in the sticks with chickens and fruit trees.
 

Her relationship with France goes back to the two years she spent busking around Europe at the age of 17.
 

She settled in Paris and spent the next seven years making a living playing cafe terraces, cinema queues and the Metro.
 

It was while living in a Paris commune that she met her husband Paul Mason, who is also her songwriting partner.
 

Angie said their current home has proved ‘very inspiring’ for the pair although ‘a song can come from anything for us – a film, a book, a story we’ve overheard’.
 

“One of the songs on the latest album came directly from my childhood, and a house I used to pass where an old woman lived on her own.
 

“But when I came to write the song what came out was not my story but her imaginary tale of why she killed her husband – so you never know where a song’s going to take you!”
 

Angie’s first release ‘Road’ was financed by the money raised from busking around Brighton and was an immediate critical success, earning comparisons with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.
 

Her second CD ‘Tales of Light and Darkness’ cemented Angie’s reputation as a songwriter, and since then her powerful live performances have taken her to most major festivals in Britain and Europe.
 

She describes her latest album, ‘Old Sticks to Scare a Bird’, as ‘literally a game of two halves - because of the two sides of my musical personality’.
 

“The first side is the bluesier, rockier stuff and the second is the more introspective singer-songwriter.”
 

The show at Bootleggers on February 20 is the only chance on this tour to catch Angie playing with band The Revelators – a talented group of musicians who have been called one of the best touring bands in the country.