TWO serendipitous events have come out of Martha Wainwright’s concert at Hebden Bridge three weeks ago.

One will definitely lead to an appearance at Pocklington Arts Centre on Sunday; as for the other, wait and see, says the Canadian-American singer-songwriter.

The definite presence is Yorkshire folk singer, songwriter and pianist Fran Smith, who will be Martha’s support act this weekend, stepping in for the originally announced special guest Sam Amidon.

“I saw Fran at Hebden Bridge when I was playing the Trades Club. She’s a fan of mine and said she wanted to open a show for me, and when Pockington said they needed someone, I thought’s ‘let’s do it’,” says Martha.

While in Hebden, she started writing a new song. “If it’s finished in time, I’ll do it in Pocklington,” she says.

As yet untitled, it will form part of a new set of songs that will see Martha expanding her range of moods and colours after last October’s Come Home To Mama album. “A lot of my songs have been about being out of love,” observes the 37-year-old daughter of folk legends Loudon Wainwright III and the late Kate McGarrige.

“I’m trying to find a more appreciative voice for the future. I wouldn’t exactly call my new songs happy, just more generous to mankind.”

Without pausing, the Montreal musician – younger sister of baroque singer Rufus Wainwright – starts to assess the lot of the artist and where the creative spirit fits in…or not. “It has to be somewhat dark,” she says.

“I was thinking about this the other day, thinking, ‘God, I just want to be content in life’. Everyone wants that; to be content, to have a nice family life, but then I reflected, I don’t think it’s the life of the artist to be conventionally content.

“What makes me content is writing good songs, and if that means going through stuff, then that’s for the best.

“And once I sing them they’re no longer about me; they’re about the listener identifying with them or empathising with them and then they’re about the universal state.”

As was the case when she played Hebden Bridge, she will be travelling solo on this month’s dates. “The circumstance I used to advantage earlier this summer was travelling on my own, not with my son or a bunch of people,” she says. “I could benefit from being alone, whereas at home every spare minute can be taken up with daily duties, which I’ve always put first.”

That said, should the muse strike and demand that she head to the attic to write, “that’s what day care is for”, to look after three-year-old Arcangelo.

“You can’t be distracted; you have to pace around; smoke cigarettes, or whatever you have to do to get in the mode of the writer, and once you’re there, you don’t want to leave that moment, break that mood, break the flow,” says Martha.

The rest of the year will be split between writing songs and more concerts. “I have a little more touring to do in the Fall, in October and November in Canada, and then I’ll start up again with the song-writing, finishing up songs for the next record.”

Before all that, she is looking forward to making her Pocklington debut, solo Martha and her guitar. “Rufus was always on the piano when we were growing up, so I never got the chance to play it,” she says, explaining her choice of instrument.

She likes performing in myriad forms, be it with a regular group, or a special assemblies of musicians to pay tribute to her mother Kate, or solo on Sunday. “I do like it that way, on my own, though I like it all ways, but when you’re playing solo you really have the opportunity to connect in a deep way with your audience because it’s a much more naked performance,” says Martha.

“It’s obviously always about the music but there’s less emphasis on production and you bring it down to the essence of songwriting.

“Playing solo, I have a tendency to tell a lot of jokes and to be engaging because the songs tend to be intense, having that darkness to them, so I like to show a lighter side and work off that dichotomy.”

The set list will highlight not only last year’s album but also “my songs that sound best solo”, and the work of Martha’s mother, who died from cancer in January 2010. “I want to do songs from this year’s Sing Me The Songs: Celebrating The Works Of Kate McGarrigle tribute, to draw everyone’s attention to her song-writing,” she says.

“If she wasn’t my mother, I would be afraid to do them in my set because they’re such strong songs and I might worry about putting them up against my own, but I feel proud that I’m .remotely connected at all.”

Among those songs will be Kate’s I Am A Diamond. “She never recorded it but it’s a highlight of the tribute album,” says Martha. “The album is taken from three concerts done in the last three years, one in London, one in New York, one in Toronto.

“For each concert, we always had four or five friends, as well as Rufus, me and Anna [McGarrigle, Kate’s sister]. Emmylou Harris, Richard Thompson, Linda Thompson, Teddy Thompson, Jimmy Fallon all played with us, and we had Mary Margaret O’Hara in Toronto, as we like to bring in talent from their home city.”

Ah, the elusive, mysterious Mary Margaret O’Hara, who is still to follow up her only ever studio album, 1988’s Miss America. “Yes, but it was a great album,” says Martha.

“If we’re the eccentric Catholic family from Montreal, then the O’Hara family are the eccentric Catholic family from Toronto!”

One song will be particularly poignant in Sunday’s show: Proserpina, the only cover version on Come Home To Mama.

“It's the last song that my mother wrote; obviously she knew that she was in the last stages of her life,” says Martha, “The fact that the song is from a mother to a daughter made it all the more relevant for me to sing."

Martha Wainwright plays Pocklington Arts Centre on Sunday at 8pm. Tickets: £21 on 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk. Please note, tickets remain valid from the original concert date of August 13.