Tim Hughes talks to Joan Armatrading ahead of a very special solo date

Fifty years ago, a teenage girl in Birmingham sat down at an old piano and started writing her own songs.

Seven years later she released her debut album – following it up with 20 more LPs and 28 singles – many of them hits.

Now, at the age of 64, Joan Armatrading is deciding to take things a bit easier.

While far from ready to hang up her guitar, the Ivor Novello Award-winning singer-songwriter is on her last major tour – and is doing it all alone.

“I will never retire but this will be the last major tour that I will undertake,” she tells me.

“For the first time these concerts will be me solo on stage playing the guitar and piano and singing. I want them to be a special lively interactive one-to-one experience.

“I have absolutely enjoyed the last 42 years of performances but now, with my final major tour, I want to capture a unique memory for both myself and the audience.”

On Sunday the singer, best known for her smouldering 1976 hit Love & Affection, and for her work alongside members of Fairport Convention, the Police and Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, swings into Oxfordshire for a headline set at Towersey Festival.

“I am looking forward it,” she says. “I look forward to all my shows.

“I’ve been incredibly fortunate – if you look at my dates, it’s essentially a sell-out tour. I don’t look forward to a show because it’s at a fancy place or in a nice city, it’s because of the audiences. They shout out stuff and make comments; it’s great!”

By playing without a band she says the songs are given a chance to breathe, creating a whole new dimension for the listener.

“I’d never done a solo world tour before so I didn’t know how the audiences would react,” she says.

“I didn’t know how it would go down, but the reaction has been fantastic, absolutely fantastic. People enjoy the show. I think they wondered what it might be like hearing the songs totally stripped back for the first time, but that’s how I write, so it’s not the first time I’ve really played these songs like this.”

She laughs: “I write solo, I don’t write with an orchestra! You could though, you could write with an orchestra, but you’d still have to start with one thing: you have to write it first.”

Born in the Caribbean but raised in Birmingham, Joan was given her first guitar by her mother, after spotting it hanging in a pawn shop window.

Her musician dad had one of his own, of course, but the young Joan was forbidden from playing with it. The household piano, meanwhile, had been bought by her mum not to play music on, but as decoration. “I started writing songs when mum bought the piano,” says Joan. “She thought it was a great piece of furniture and knew which wall she wanted to put it against.

“She only got it because she thought it looked good; no one was going to play it.

“I was young then, only 14, but I had been writing limericks and jokes when I was even younger.”

She admits that all seems a long time ago. I ask her to what she attributes her longevity as an artist: “I have no idea,” she says cheerily.

“You’ll have to ask the people. I guess they enjoy the songs first and foremost.”

“Every songwriter will say the same thing, but it is about the song – people want to really connect with it.

“I’ve had people tell me they’ve named their child, got married, or played a song at the funeral of a relative.

“People get emotionally attached to my songs, as they do with other songwriters’.

“Just now, when I was in America, a guy came up to me and said my music had introduced him to his girlfriend.

“That’s a great thing to have, that connection. It’s what gets people interested.

“I’ve always done something different, I’m constantly writing. I’ve released, what, 20 studio albums, and I’m still writing, and I’m lucky that people still want to hear the new songs, and that they still connect with them.”

And which songs mean the most to her? “They all mean a lot to me,” she answers.

“It’s like asking a parent ‘which is your favourite child and why?’ and it’s just as hard to pick a song.” She laughs again, and goes on: “Love And Affection has a special meaning, though.

“It’s not necessarily my most, or least, favourite, but it helped me become known all over the world.

“That’s a special song. If not for that song, I might not have had the career that I’ve had. But that whole album (1976’s Joan Armatrading) got me noticed.

“The reaction to other songs, like Down To Zero, Willow and Drop The Pilot has also been incredible, but Love And Affection has to have a special place.”

Joan joins an impressive line-up of talent at Towersey, which begins at Thame Showground tomorrow.

Also playing over the course of four days are Cowley folk-pop band Stornoway, Show Of Hands, Treacherous Orchestra, Sally Barker and avant-folk 11-piece Bellowhead – who are playing a final festival show before splitting next year.

So does she have any tips on surviving Oxfordshire’s longest music festival? “I’m completely the wrong person to ask,” she grins.

“I’m useless to ask about that stuff. I’m self-sufficient and quite calm, so I don’t need survival tips so I’m not the greatest person to ask.

“Ask a rebel, someone who’s out there, on the edge!”

Where and when
Towersey Festival is at the Thame Showground, Kingsey Road, Thame, from tomorrow to Monday.
Day and weekend tickets from towerseyfestival.com