AMERICAN singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter will back up Friday's release of her new album, The Things That We Are Made Of, with a summer tour that will visit York Barbican on July 22.

The five-time Grammy Award winner and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee last played in The Press territory last July at the Platform Festival in Pocklington. That night at the Old Station she showcased the newly written title track; only Mary Chapin and her guitar and a spellbound audience for a typically resonant story as she looked ahead to better days after a serious illness.

Produced by 2016 Producer of the Year Grammy nominee Dave Cobb, who latterly has worked with Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson, the album features eleven new songs written by Mary Chapin, among them the stand-out Something Tamed Something Wild.

The album was recorded at Nashville’s Sound Emporium and Low Country Sound studios during the spring and summer of 2015, when Mary Chapin was joined by Cobb on assorted guitars, plus bassists Annie Clements and Brian Allen, percussionist Chris Powell and pianists Mike Webb and Jimmy Wallace.

“Working with Dave felt great from the first day of our sessions," says Mary Chapin. "He is always willing to try something new, believes that ‘yes’ is the only answer, and surrounds himself with wonderfully talented and generous musicians. By the end of the project, I felt as if I was a part of a new family.”

As for Dave Cobb, he "wanted to work with Mary Chapin because very few people can cut with words like she can". "She’s an absolute poet and legend. I was so happy to collaborate on this album together,” he says.

“I was so happy he wanted to work with me,” Carpenter says. “Finding a producer is a little like looking for a date for the prom: will anybody want to take me? But I couldn’t have felt more embraced and welcomed.”

Cobb suggested subtle touches that keep each new hearing fresh. “He’s very old school in that he likes hooks and choruses so he would indicate a riff or something else and say, ‘I’d like to hear that again',so the record doesn’t drag," says Mary Chapin. "The way we sequenced it, we take you on a journey.

“I feel as if I’m still trying to come up with a reliable way of talking about what this album is about. I haven’t finished thinking about it. It’s part of an ongoing conversation that I’m having with myself about my life, but if you’re not trying to connect in some way to the world, what else is there? All I can hope for is that people connect to it. That’s the most rewarding part of doing this work; believing that you’re speaking to what we all feel."

Over the course of her career, Mary Chapin has recorded 14 albums and sold more than 14 million records. In 2014, she released her debut orchestral album, Songs From The Movie, arranged and co-produced by six-time Grammy winner Vince Mendoza, who oversaw such compositions as Between Here And Gone and Come On Come On.

Mary Chapin has since performed alongside the New York Philharmonic, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the London Concert Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the National Symphony Orchestra.

Tickets cost £30.80 on 0844 854 2757, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or from the Barbican box office in person. The Things We Are Made Of will be available through Lambient Light Records via Thirty Tiger from Friday.