Durham-based songwriter and folk-singer Jez Lowe talks to Helen Brown about selling out venues across the country with his annual Christmas Show, Cauld Feet Again, Pet

You recently completed a tour of New Zealand , Canada and the US, how did audience receive your Geordie folk style? I’ve been lucky enough to have been travelling to these countries for many years, and they all have an established circuit of clubs and festivals who are familiar with British folk music, so I’ve been able to slot into that quite easily. The subject matter of folk songs seems to resonate with people no matter what country they’re in. I do have to soften my accent a little bit, but not too much.

You are fast gaining ground as the most ‘covered’ songwriter on the UK circuit. Can you give us a brief précis of who’s covering what? Lots of non-professional singers around the folk circuit sing my songs, for which I’m very grateful. There are more well-known people who sing them too, like Fairport Convention, The Dubliners, The Unthanks, Bob Fox, Mary Black, and lots of American and Canadian acts too.

Dare I ask for your favourite composition? I love them all. But one called London Danny is probably my favourite, this week anyway.

You are also involved with the on-going BBC series, The Radio Ballads, can you tell us a little of your contribution? We’ve done four series of Radio Ballads for Radio Two, dealing with various subjects. I’ve been a sort of 'staff writer' on all of them, so there are about 60 songs of mine in there. Mostly they’re sung by other people, but it’s a great team of singers and musicians. The current series is called The Ballad of the Great War.

BBC Radio DJ Mike Harding said recently: “No-one else writes or sounds like Jez Lowe” - a huge compliment. How do you feel about that? Coming from Mike, who is himself a great writer and performer, that truly is a compliment. It’s also what I always wanted to achieve, to sound or write like no-one else, though there are obvious influences in there.

Can you tell us about your new solo album, The Ballad Beyond??It includes some songs from the various Radio Ballads series, along with songs I’ve written for other projects or just to use in my live performances. It often happens when I take songs away from these specific projects, they need developing beyond their original context, hence the title of the album. I have my regular band The Bad Pennies backing me on it, along with Rod Clements and Ian Thompson from Lindisfarne, and old friends like Maggie Holland and also Paul and Christine Stockton, who played with me in my first band, Hendon Banks, 40 years ago in Sunderland.

Where do you look for inspiration to keep producing such distinctive new songs? The North-East, the people and places and way of life, have always been my main inspiration, and remain so. It makes it all the more remarkable to me that the songs travel so well. People really are the same the world over.

What can Sage Gateshead’s audience expect from your Christmas show? The Christmas show is always a little more zany and unpredictable than our regular gigs, with lots of laughs, but lots of folk music too. We try to style it like an old fashioned music-hall revue, which of course is very much part of the North East folk tradition. We’ll be joined as usual by the singer Benny Graham, who has a tremendous feel for all of that.

What has the response been like to your weekly folk column, which you write for The Northern Echo? I always try to treat it like a little personal message, telling people what’s going on in the world of folk, as I know most of the performers and a lot of the audience personally. There’s so much going on around the folk scene, and most of it is ignored by mainstream media, so we’re all grateful to The Northern Echo for giving us this little platform every week.

Can you share your own personal hopes for the future of folk music in general? That it continues to go on the right path and not be swallowed up and spat out by fashion and trends. Folk music has become almost mainstream these days, but I hope the integrity of it, that first appealed to me, still survives.

What’s next? I’ll be playing with The Bad Pennies again of course, but in the New Year I start gigging with a new band called The Broonzies, which is a very different approach to music for me. We have our first couple of gigs in January in Hexham and Washington. I’ll be giving more details about that in my column of course.

  • Catch Jez and The Bad Pennies with Cauld Feet Again, Pet, Thurs, Dec 4, Kirkby Malzeard Mechanics Inst Hall, 01423-339168.

Wed, Dec 17, Bishop Auckland Town Hall, 0300-026-9524 or bishopauklandtownhall.org

Sage Gateshead, Hall Two, Sat, Dec 27, 2pm. 01091-443-4661 info sagegateshead.co.uk and jez.lowe.com