THIS has been the year of the all-female trios: from Case/Lang/Veirs to Olivia Newton-John, Beth Nielsen Chapman & Amy Sky; from the reissue of Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt's Trio to Applewood Road.

The last of these brings together ex-pat Australian Emily Barker, who now lives in Stroud but "doesn't spend much time there", and two American singer-songwriters, Amber Rubarth and Amy Speace.

The story goes that they met for the first time in an East Nashville cafe in September 2014. Two hours later they had written the song they called Applewood Road. An album ensued, recorded before they had played even one show together, and now they are on the road, to the delight of The Band Room promoter Nigel Burnham, who has booked the "Americana|country|folk supergroup" to play there tonight.

He calls Emily Barker "one of our all-time favourites" on account of her regular sorties to the magical Low Mill locale, and the feeling is mutual. "The Band Room works for me as one of my favourite places to play," says Emily.

First, however, let's head to Nashville to recall the making of a record The Sunday Times called "a flawless set that has to be the most haunting release of the past year".

"I was in Nashville for the first time for an Americana festival and I was putting together these different links I had," says Emily. "Amy was one of them and Amber was a friend of hers, and in Nashville it's a common thing to co-write songs. We met for coffee and decided to go to Amy's house where we sat around and Applewood Road was written in two hours!"

York Press:

Applewood Road: three singers, one microphone

They booked studio time at Nashville’s analogue studio Welcome To 1979 and the following week recorded the song live to tape with only double bass as accompaniment.

Their three-part harmonies were indeed harmonious, the sparse arrangement beautiful, and they instinctively knew they should reconvene later, having each written more songs. Six months down the line, they had 24 between them to cherry pick for recording sessions live to tape around one microphone on their return to Welcome To 1979.

Accompaniment would be minimal, albeit from such as session players Aaron Lee Tasjan on guitar, Fats Kaplin on accordion, Telisha Williams on upright bass, Jabe Beyer on harmonica and Josh Day on drums.

"We had only four days to hear all the songs we'd written and choose the ones we'd record, work on the harmonies, choose the instruments, and we decided we'd always keep the three voices at the centre, rather than cluttering it with instrumentation," says Emily. "The most instruments we had on any of the 12 songs we recorded was three."

Applewood Road play The Band Room, Low Mill, Farndale, North York Moors, tonight, 7.30pm. Box office: 01751 432900 or thebandroom.co.uk