There’s no obvious resemblance between fresh-faced Yorkshire girl Kate Rusby and pneumatic Tennessee-rooted bottle blonde Dolly Parton.

But Kate is delighted that she’s been compared to the country star, with one critic calling her ‘the English Dolly Parton’. “I adore Dolly, she’s proper fab! I was over the moon with that comparison,” beams Kate. “Everyone goes on about Madonna being the iconic female artist with longevity and the ability to reinvent herself, but Dolly was doing all that long before.

“She’s tough, she has a great business head and the best thing is her amazing voice. She still sings like she could as a teenager, it doesn’t often happen that someone keeps their voice like that. She’s grounded in traditional music and loves it with a passion. She’s a real inspiration.”

The ‘English Dolly’ is the latest title bestowed on Kate, also known as ‘the Barnsley Nightingale’ and the queen of British contemporary folk. Her Yorkshire roots have a strong pull on her music, whether she’s singing ancient folk songs or her own material. She’s looking forward to coming to Bradford with her band next week.

“We love playing in Bradford; St George’s Hall is so lovely to sing in, we always have a great time there,” she says. “We’re in the middle of making a new album, so there’ll be some songs from that in the show.

“I was meant to do an album last year, but ran out of time before my daughter was born. Hopefully it will be out September time. So there’ll be old songs, new songs, tunes and fun to be had in Bradford.”

Kate enjoys breathing new life into songs. “I’ve collected old ballad books over the years, I look through them and find fantastic gems hidden in the pages,” she says.

“Often they don’t have tunes anymore, or only half a song is there. I love writing a new tune so a song can be sung again, or re-writing and re-moulding it, but still telling the story. It feels like you’re setting the songs free, sending them out into the world again to be heard, sung and passed about again.

“Folk songs are songs about people and their lives, what they do, where they go. I loved the album a few years ago by The Streets, to me that was modern-day folk music. Every song told part of the same story so if you listened to the album from start to finish you found out a bit more. I loved it.”

She adds: “My songwriting is very rarely about myself, it’s nearly always about other people or fictitious characters. I write late at night when there’s no-one around, I sit with my guitar and plonk around and sometimes a song starts to form.”

Kate, 35, grew up with music in her blood. Her musician parents toured with their ceilidh band, taking Kate, sister Emma and brother Joe with them, and she learned piano, fiddle and guitar from a young age. “My parents were always playing and singing, story songs were our bedtime stories, they kept us quiet on long journeys,” she says. “They’re my favourite kind of songs. They were written to pass on stories and gossip from the next village or wherever.

“They’re songs about real people and emotions, that’s why many of them are incredibly moving.

“They’re like mini films, you know? They set up characters and you find out who they love, who they want to love, where they’re going and who they meet. By the end you feel like you’ve had a journey with them.”

Kate joined folk bands The Poozies and Equation, also featuring Seth Lakeman, then came her debut solo album, Hourglass, in 1997. She went on to release albums including Sleepless, Heartlands, Awkward Annie and Sweet Bells.

Her record label, Pure, is a family affair. “My dad runs it, mum does the accounts – and baby roadie duties too – my sister does the PR and organises everyone and my brother is our sound engineer. It works well. We trust each other and everyone is of equal importance, like cogs in a wheel. We can record when we want, tour when we want, even sit and eat buns if we fancy!

“Not many musicians have that freedom. They get bossed about and told who to work with, when to get albums done, what kind of music they have to play to sell more records. I make the music I want and, something that’s very important to me, I own all my work. I’m a very lucky girl.”

Kate Rusby is at St George’s Hall on Thursday at 7.30pm. For tickets, ring (01274) 432000.