EMILY Barker won the accolade of UK Artist of the Year at the 2018 UK Americana Awards. No mean feat for an Aussie!

"I was really happy to be included," says Emily, who leads the Emily Barker Trio at Pocklington Arts Centre tomorrow night at 8pm. "I first came over here in 2000, just travelling as a backpacker, but I properly started living here in 2005, and I now live in Stroud."

Ironically, the album that led to the Australian ex-pat's award – last year's Sweet Kind Of Blue – was recorded in a third country, the United States, and more precisely at Sam Phillips Recording Service, in Memphis, Tennessee, with Grammy-winning producer Matt Ross-Spang and an all-star cast of Memphis session players.

"It came about because I was reaching out to various Nashville artists and engineers and asking who they thought was a new, up-and-coming producer. Matt's name came up, and when I was over there doing some shows with Applewood Road [another Barker band], I'd planned to meet Matt and probably make the album in Nashville, where he does a lot of work," Emily recalls.

"But instead he asked to meet at Sam Phillips Recording Service, which I didn't know existed, whereas I did know about Sun Studios in Memphis. It turned out to be a really old-school place with lovely pastel colours."

She knocked on unanswered doors, clambered in through a fire escape window, found a room marked Sam Phillips office; still no sign of Ross-Spang, until she ventured downstairs and finally tracked him down in Studio A, a huge studio with classic analogue equipment, designed by Phillips in the late 1950s. So began the creation of Sweet Kind Of Blue, an album of soul, blues, country and folk. "I never met any of the session players until the first day, then we made the core of the record in just five days, doing all the vocals live, and then adding harmonies," says Emily.

Now she will play songs from present and past Barker works on tour with partner Lukas Drinkwater on double bass and guitar and Rob Pemberton on drums and bass. Box office: 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk