TIM HUGHES talks to acclaimed singer-songwriter Gretchen Peters ahead of her show in Oxford

GRETCHEN Peters is trying to keep cool. It may be grey and overcast in England but in Nashville the mercury is rising – and it’s getting unbearable.

“It’s just gotten really hot here in Nashville,” she says. “The Southern summer has begun in earnest, so I’m inside in my living room where it’s dark and cool.”

New York-born and Colorado-raised, Gretchen has found her true home in Tennessee’s capital of country music. An acclaimed singer-songwriter in her own right, she is even better known for writing songs for other artists – Neil Diamond, Etta James, Faith Hill, Patty Loveless, Martina McBride and Bryan Adams.

How does it feel, I ask, to hear your own songs performed, and turned into hits, by other stars?

“Songs are like children; they grow up, they go off and have their lives,” she says. “Some of them have lives with me and some of them go elsewhere. It feels natural, and, of course, it’s always flattering when another artist feels they can inhabit a song I wrote.”

But does she feel she gets the recognition she deserves? “That’s a loaded question!”she laughs.

“I think on some level, every artist, if he or she were honest, would answer ‘no’, because we all want to bring our music to every single person who might find some value in it, and that’s impossible.

“Sometimes I do feel I received more recognition for my songwriting career than for my touring, recording and performing career, but even that’s changing – especially in the UK.

“One of the reasons I have been coming back to the UK faithfully, year after year, is because I think people ‘get’ me there. They’re not so concerned with genres and boxes and styles and all those categories which have bedevilled me since I began making records.

“I do what I do, and it’s not precisely country, folk, pop, rock, jazz or anything else, but an amalgam of all of those things. When someone asks me what kind of music I do now I say ‘slow and sad’. That shuts them up!”

A big part of the reason Gretchen is being regarded so highly as performer in her own right, is her latest album, which is making waves way beyond her adopted Deep South. A Top Five Americana album in the States, Hello Cruel World was hailed as one of the best country albums of last year.

Confessional and honest, Gretchen’s songwriting continues that great country music love of melancholy. “I’d describe it as having a well of sadness,” she says. “It’s not that I’m sad all the time. I’m most certainly not. I love to laugh and my sense of humour is what gets me through life. But I have always had a great capacity to empathise with people who are hurting, and I can take myself there, quite easily, when I write.

“I can call it up almost at will. There’s a kind of ecstasy for me in writing, or singing a sad song. It’s hard to describe, but it makes me feel alive.”

British fans will again get a chance to soak up that deliciously bittersweet sadness this week, when she arrives for a tour in support of the new album. The show culminates with a set at the gigantic Glastonbury Festival but Oxford fans are fortunate enough to be able to see her in the cosy St John the Evangelist Church, in Iffley Road, where she plays on Wednesday. And Gretchen can’t wait to get here.

“I always look forward to coming back to the UK,” she says. “I feel as though it’s my second home, in a way. It’s hard to say which date I’m looking forward to the most. Glastonbury is thrilling to do, but it’s a madhouse, and while the crowds are large, there’s something about playing in a theatre or an old church for people who’ve come just to see us. That means a lot.”

But, for all her touring, she admits she loves to get back to country music’s steamy heartland.

“Nashville is ‘having a moment’ right now, and we are the beneficiaries,” she says. “There are suddenly so many fantastic restaurants, shops, and things to do, as well as cool venues and great music.

“When we go out, we get to hear and see things that most people only dream of. In one week recently, I took a taxi over to the Ryman Auditorium and sang with Bryan Adams. Two nights later I went and sat in at the Station Inn and sang with Matraca Berg. Then J.D. Souther came in and sang a few songs.

“That could only happen in Nashville!”

Gretchen Peters plays St John the Evangelist Church, Oxford on Wednesday.
Tickets are £18 from wegottickets.com.
She also plays Glastonbury Festival, Somerset. Tickets have sold out.