WHERE is home to American blues rock singer Sari Schorr these days, as she straddles the Big Pond, writing, recording and touring with her band The Engine Room?

"We were just trying to figure that out the other day," says Sari, who will be in York on Thursday to play Fibbers. "I'm lucky to be spending more time on this side of the ocean now, as I have a place over here in Bath with a fireplace in the bedroom! My family's in the US, scattered around New York, where I live in Brooklyn, though I'm originally from Queens."

Sari has been working in Bath on her follow-up to her aptly titled debut album, A Force Of Nature, and she finds it the ideal working environment. "I can tell you this: the fury of New York can be aggressive when you're trying to be creative and you need solitude and quiet, and that's very hard to find there.

"I started writing the album in America and it just wasn't that productive. I just felt very detached from my band and management, who are based over in Britain." There was the pull of her family too, wanting her to spend time with her mother and sister.

Sari settled on heading to Spain with her band for a week to work on putting The Engine Room at the heart of the record before returning to Bath to write two songs a night for five days. "Sometimes you just have to find the outlet for what's hanging around in your head and tormenting you, but then when you're having the most pure form of creativity it can feel like it's coming from outside you," she says.

Her force of nature will strike again in the recording studio. In the meantime, Sari, guitarist Innes Sibun and co will focus on her first album's songs at Fibbers on Thursday.

Sari Schorr & The Engine Room play Fibbers, York, March 23, supported by The Dead Cats and Syncrownized at 7.30pm. Box office: fibbers.co.uk