EMILY Barker joins the ranks of "The Band Room greats" with her fifth show at the Low Mill wooden shed, on the North York Moors near Farndale, on November 11.

The Australian-born singer and songwriter first played there with The Pine Leaf Boys in July 2007, followed by two Emily Barker And The Red Clay Halo gigs in March 2009 and October 2013 and a trio outing under the name Applewood Road with Amber Rubarth and Amy Speace last November.

Next month Barker and her band will be promoting her latest album, Sweet Kind Of Blue, released in May through Everyone Sang/Kartel. The record marks a new sound for Emily who revisited the soul and blues influences that first inspired her by recording at the Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, Tennessee, home to such acts as Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bob Dylan and Booker T, in June last year.

Produced by Matt Ross-Spang, who has worked with Margo Price, Jason Isbell and Mary Chapin Carpenter, the recordings feature mighty fine Memphis session musicians Rick Steff, Dave Smith, Dave Cousar and Steve Potts, who have performed on studio sessions for John Mayall, Cat Power and Norah Jones.

"In this short amount of time [four days], myself and the musicians become very close," says Barker. "It’s a magical thing to experience; the rapid transition from strangers to life-long friends, it doesn’t always happen."

Barker's songs of loves lost, heart-rending humanity, the rush of the road trip and the glory of a new love form her first solo record since Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo’s Dear River in 2013.

In a prolific career, Barker has penned and performed theme songs for Wallander and The Shadow Line and for the film The Keeping Room, as well as the musical score for the poignant 2015 road movie Hector, starring Peter Mullan. She has released several albums, both solo, as Emily Barker And The Red Clay Halo and with her side projects Vena Portae and Applewood Road. At the 2012 London Olympics Games opening ceremony, she performed with Frank Turner.

Barker's tour next month takes her to The Wardrobe, Leeds. on November 10 before her Band Room gig the following night at 7.30pm, for which tickets cost £15 at thebandroom.co.uk or on 01751 432900.

Meanwhile, Anna Coogan so impressed The Band Room promoter Nigel Burnham on her previous visit to Low Mill that he asked the sassy Boston-born guitarist to appear there again last Saturday.

"Anna brought the house down when she played here with Johnny Dowd and Michael Edmondson in October 2016," says Burnham. "She easily deserved her invitation to return in a collaboration with one of New York State’s finest drummers, Brian Wilson, alias Willie B, who has previously worked with Neko Case and Jamie Lidell, as well as Dowd."

Coogan has experienced a colourful life to date. Brought up listening to Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan and Giacomo Puccini, she trained as an opera singer at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg before working as a limnologist – the study of inland waters – in Washington State and Alaska. She then busked in Seattle until moving to her present home in Ithaca, New York.

Coogan is equally accomplished playing beautiful acoustic Americana or electric buzzing guitar, heavy on wah-wah, pedals, distortion and feedback. Her new album, The Lonely Cry Of Space & Time, showcases Coogan’s three-octave soprano vocals, backdropped by her ambient electric guitar soundscapes and Willie B’s ferociously pneumatic drums and Moog bass, in a fusion of rock, alt.country, pop and classical music.