AS she prepares to come to Bury Met as part of her first solo tour in five years, award-winning singer-songwriter Heidi Talbot has much to reflect on.

She has a new album to her name - Sing It For A Lifetime - which marks a slight change in direction taking her away from her folk roots and embracing a more country/Americana feel.

The album was recorded during lockdown with Heidi working in her living room in Edinburgh and producer Dirk Powell and the rest of the musicians in Louisiana.

“One thing that the pandemic meant was that we all got really good using our digital infrastructure,” laughed Heidi. “But we had no choice.

“I had made all the arrangements, my flights were booked, I’d sorted out the childcare - she has two daughters - but then it became clear I was going to be allowed in to America.

“I rang Dirk and said ‘what do we do now?’ We had the studio time and the musicians so it just seemed the best thing to do was to carry on and record the album.”

With a time difference of six hours, Heidi was able to have direct contact with the musicians and the studio but it also gave her time to listen to what had been done in the studio.

“I think that really helped,” she said. “When you’re all together in a studio the one thing you don’t have is that space to analyse what you have done, it’s all very pressurised. Dirk would send me the files he’s been working on and I could listen to them and suggest a few tweaks and changes which I don’t think I would have done had we all been together.”

If transatlantic working didn’t present a big enough challenge, Heidi was also in the process of selling her house at the same time.

“I basically had built this cave out of soundproof foam in the living room which was where I did all my recordings,” she said. “It was fine but I did get some strange looks when some people came for a viewing. I did have to tell them ‘this won’t be here if you buy the house’. But being in your own environment is always really helpful when trying to be creative.”

Although the recording process might have been unusual, the finished album is something that Heidi is really proud of and she can’t wait to take the songs from it out on the road.

“I’m really excited to let the songs breathe and become their own entities,” she said. “There is always such a difference when you are playing the songs live; they take on their own little lives and I’m so excited to see that. Also the band I’m touring with didn’t play on the record so it will be interesting to see what their take on them is and to play the songs in a completely new environment in front of a live audience. I’m so looking forward to it.”

Sing It for a Lifetime was the first album Heidi has recorded for several years not produced by her now ex-husband John McCusker.

“I wanted to make a different kind of record,” she said. “I didn’t want to just make the same kind of record as I had with John producing but not with him there if that makes sense. I knew I wanted something with a more country feel to it.”

Working on Sing It for a Lifetime helped Heidi during the difficult period of lockdown due to Covid.

“It was quite a scary time,” she said. “Basically all the work disappeared and we didn’t know when we might be able to get back on the road. I think all artists found different ways of getting round the situation whether it was by doing online concerts or looking at other ways to bring in some income.

“It certainly gave me a bit of a fright and I realised that I needed to have something else I could do.”

Heidi is already a yoga and pilates teacher but in January she began a postgraduate course in writing film scores.

As well as the current tour she has also a series of dates arranged later in the year touring with Boo Hewerdine

“There is quite a lot going on, that’s for sure,” she said. “It’s all about juggling things. But then as anyone with children will tell you, there’s always some level of juggling required to make things work.”

Given she has so much on her plate, it’s amazing that Heidi has any time to be creative and write new material.

“You just have to schedule some time when you can,” she said. “You can never say I’’ve got an hour so I will write a song then - that’s never going to work. But it doesn’t mean you can’t be creative in that time; you never know when an idea might hit you and it might lead to something else.

“I walked a lot during lockdown and one day I came home and I’m sure I just caught a song while in the woods. I had it all written within 10 minutes when I got home - that just never happens. Who knows where that came from? Maybe a spirit in the woods or a ghost.”

Heidi Talbot, Bury Met, Sunday, March 19. Details from www.themet.org.uk