YOU might say that Julie Ann Baenziger is not your usual California girl. And she would be the first to agree.

There’s something off-kilter about this quirky Sacramento singer-songwriter… a touch of the eccentric coupled with a keen creative edge and the kind of prodigious musical talent which sees her play any instrument she sets her mind to.

And her piercing eyes, jet-black pudding bowl bob, and an enigmatic smile which seems to mask some inner sadness, only reinforces the sense that here is someone completely different.

“I am like an alien,” she laughs, among the clattering cups at Leigh Delamere services on the M4 in Wiltshire – en route to a show in Bristol.

“I’ve always felt different.”

Given the prosaic nature of her surroundings, and the downright depressing weather outside, Jules, 26, is supremely happy, and giggles… or, rather, bursts into belly laughs without prompting. And it’s infectious.

“I just love being over here,” she gasps, in a West Coast drawl so laid back, it’s at times hard to understand. “It’s so cool. It’s my first big tour and everything is amazing. It’s even better than I imagined.”

Given the slate grey skies, bone-chilling cold and questionable quality of service station food, it’s hard to see why she’s enjoying herself so much.

Particularly as just days earlier she had her handbag – with purse and passport - stolen after being mobbed by fans outside a gig in Birmingham.

“I guess they wanted my money,” she sighs. “But they also got my diary which was full of the kind of crazy stuff that I wouldn’t even tell my mother.

“But I’m having an adventure. This is my dream. I’m enjoying a few ciders and am with good friends; I’m having the time of my life.”

Jules, whose multi-instrumental talents incorporate the acoustic guitar, marimba, glockenspiel and slide guitar, plays under the moniker Sea of Bees – a name we’ll be hearing a lot more of throughout 2011.

I confess to her that I don’t get it, and she tries to put me straight. “It was a really random thing that came out of a party,” she says.

“I’ve always been known as Julie ‘B’ because Baenziger is too hard to say, and on my first record I played everything, so I told my friends I was like a ‘sea of Julie Bs’, because it sounded like there was more than one of me. That became Sea of Bees.”

So what does she sound like? “Oh.. I’m heartbreak indie-pop,” she says. “I keep experimenting and trying new stuff. I guess I want to be a guru of all things.”

“I try to be happy, have fun and have a good time with my friends. But also to be wild and free. Everything has to be for the best.

“For me music started as a therapeutic thing. I have 20 years of things that have happened in my life. I grew up in a nice home in suburbia but felt restrained. I wasn’t experiencing the kind of things I thought I would, and felt caged. I had a lot of inner hurt and sadness but, somehow, also hope.”

On Saturday she plays the Old Bookbinders as part of a night organised by her record label, Heavenly Recordings, topping a bill which also features reflective husband and wife folk duo Trevor Moss & Hannah-Lou, below, and James Walbourne.

The night will see Jules airing songs from album Song for the Ravens, out this week.

“We’re going to have a good time,” she says, adding, oddly: “And I’ll be myself for the whole time.”

Jules is clearly in, what Californians like to call ‘a happy place’.

“I like being me and being colourful.

“This is what I’ve always wanted to be!”