Music Preview: A time to celebrate indeed, and a time to recall for Kate

Underlining the Barnsley-based folk singer’s love of the festive season is new album Light Years, which, remarkably, is her seventh Christmas recording.

Equally, it comes as no surprise that her Christmas tour includes a date at Sheffield City Hall on Thursday, December 14, which is ten days after the milestone of her 50th birthday.

A time to celebrate indeed, and a time to recall, as a youngster, crowded pub tap rooms lapping up the local songs and carols roared out between late November and New Year’s Day.

These were the songs and tunes often deemed too irreverent for the 19th century Church, so they were taken elsewhere, such as to pubs and communities in the north of Sheffield – the likes of Worrall, Grenoside, Dungworth and Ecclesfield.

For Kate, who went on to become a BBC Folk Award winner and Mercury Prize nominee, there are early memories of being surrounded by family, community, warmth, happiness … and colouring books and crisps.

The new album offers a few twists as local traditional fare is mixed with mainstream singalongs such as It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year and a fusion of Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree and Sleigh Ride plus Chris de Burgh’s A Spaceman Came Travelling.

Then there’s The Moon Shines Bright featuring Alison Krauss and Ron Block whom she first met aged 16 when Alison Krauss and Union Station played Edale Bluegrass Festival and Kate’s dad, Steve, was a sound engineer.

The tour offers another chance to hear Kate alongside her fine band of acoustic musicians that includes producer and husband Damien O’Kane as well the brass quintet known as The Brass Boys.

If it’s Christmas, it must be Kate Rusby, who, at 50, raises a glass not only to the time of year, but also to her enduring career.

“I feel so lucky to be still making music after 32 years and even luckier to enjoy it so much.”