JUDITH Owen will play "an intimate kind of show" when the Welsh jazz pianist, singer and songwriter visits a sold-out Selby Town Hall tonight.

"It's not theatrical but it's a really joyously entertaining evening," she says. "I'm a storyteller so I won't just be singing songs, and there'll be as much humour as seriousness in there."

Judith will be promoting her 11th album, Somebody’s Child, a jazz, soul and mature pop record she made with such great session musicians as guitarist Waddy Wachtel, drummer Russell Kunkel and bass player Leland Sklar, from Carole King and James Taylor’s legendary backing band, The Section.

Sklar is accompanying Judith on her UK tour, alongside British drummer Pedro Segundo and cellist Gabriella Swallow, "We've been in Europe for two months, playing Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, Italy," she says. "It's going to be a bit of a culture shock: Bologna, Rome, Dublin, Paris...Selby!"

Somebody's Child is undergoing a staggered release schedule. "It came out over here at the end of May but it doesn't come out in America till next year when it'll be released with new songs in a new package, so there'll be two years of touring this album," says Judith.

York Press:

Judith Owen: "It's going to be a bit of a culture shock: Bologna, Rome, Dublin, Paris...Selby!"

"If you want to make some kind of living out of music you have to tour and tour as that's the only place to sell your records and it's a way you build your audience as a singer-songwriter. That's the place you live, on the road, which is a wonderful thing to do.

"That's why we're dreading coming off the tour because it becomes like being with your school friends; here I am, surrounded by the sound of laughter constantly through the day, so you're being the childhood band you wish you'd had."

Somebody's Child marks a break from Judith's past albums. "It's a very particular record for me," she says. "I'm normally a confessional singer-songwriter, like the people who influenced me, such as Joni Mitchell, Carole King and James Taylor, but this album is about all those things around us when usually I'm in denial, rushing around!

"Instead this album came from seeing this girl in the street in Manhattan, probably 16/17, no shoes, no clothes, just trash bags to cover her, pregnant, literally about to give birth and drugged out of her mind, in the snow. I ran to the other side of the road to get away from her as you do in those situations... but then I had this epiphanal moment where I thought, 'this is somebody's child, who started like me and I could easily be in that position, without parents or luck'.

"That became the theme of everything on the album: the little things that you can miss are the most important things in life. I went back to the girl and a few people gathered around her to help her. It was Christmastime, the weather was extreme, she was pregnant, needing help, and the irony was not lost on me at a time when everyone was running around buying presents."

Judith Owen plays Selby Town Hall tonight at 8pm; sold out. Doors open at 7.30pm. Americana duo Balsamo Deighton, alias Steve Balsamo and Rosalie Deighton, will be the support act.