NEW York City country singer-songwriter Laura Cantrell will play Pocklington Arts Centre on May 5.

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Laura came to New York to attend Columbia College and found that her abiding interest in country music helped her stay connected with her family roots. It was the motivation too behind her long-running radio show on WFMU in Jersey City, New Jersey, The Radio Thrift Shop, which ran on Saturday afternoons in the New York area for 13 years, then moved to WFMU.org.

Since the Millennium, Laura has issued the albums Not The Tremblin’ Kind, When The Roses Bloom Again and Humming By The Flowered Vine and a mini-album of covers, Trains And Boats And Planes.

In 2011, she released Kitty Wells Dresses: Songs Of The Queen Of Country Music, made in honour of one of her heroines, Kitty Wells. This meditation on femininity in country music took its title from Cantrell's one original song on a set of covers, written in tribute to Wells. Her most recent album, No Way There From Here, came out in 2013.

Laura's plans for 2016 include a 15th anniversary vinyl edition of Not The Tremblin' Kind, her debut album that the late radio presenter John Peel memorably called “my favourite record of the last ten years, possibly my life”. Cantrell recorded several Peel sessions for the BBC from 2000 to 2004 and appeared on the first Peel Day programme on BBCRadio One commemorating the first anniversary of Peel’s death.

Reflecting on her activities last year, Laura says: "With 2015 just in the rear view, I'm remembering it as the 'year of the video' with a whopping three video releases in the year.

"The video for All The Girls Are Complicated made its debut at Paste Magazine's blog in late January; the lovely work for my collaboration with The Charlatans and Sinkane for the song Emanuel featured on a Record Store Day UK single; finally, the video for Can't Wait debuted at Rolling Stone Country in November, made by artist Hugh Hales-Tooke."

Tickets for Laura's 8pm show in Pocklington are on sale at £17 on 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk