LUCINDA Williams, the American rock, folk, blues and country singer and songwriter, will play the opening night of Pocklington's Platform Festival.

The three-time Grammy Award winner from Lake Charles is on a short tour to promote her January double album, The Ghosts Of Highway 20, a record of dark beauty and hard-living melancholia with a common thread running through its 14 songs, delivered in her languid Louisiana drawl.

All but two of the narratives revolve around the 1,500 miles of Highway 20 – also known as Interstate 20 – that runs in part from Georgia to Texas, as Williams draws on her experiences and connections to this stretch of road.

Taking the form of a road trip, the chain of songs was inspired by people, place and time, whether it be the cities where Williams has lived (Atlanta and Macon), or where she has family ties (Shreveport and Monroe), or where she has written about previously (Jackson and Vicksburg).

After 11 studio albums in a four-decade career that began with 1980's Happy Woman Blues, Williams is in her most prolific writing days at the age of 63. The Ghosts Of Highway 20 has arrived only 18 months after 2014's Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone, the record she previewed in her last North Yorkshire engagement at the Grand Opera House in York in June 2013.

Pocklington Arts Centre general manager Janet Farmer, who has organised the July 12 gig, says. "It was always going to be a hard task booking somebody to match Mary Chapin Carpenter's wonderful performance at the festival last year but I think we've managed to do that with Lucinda."

Doors will open one hour before Williams's 8pm show. Box office: 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk