Dillon Promise

4pm Saturday, Witnness 2001. Not the first place you’d expect to hear Cara Dillon perform her blend of folk and traditional Irish music.

“Witnness was fantastic,” Dillon enthuses, plying hotpress with tea and biscuits in her front room. “The Café tent was supposed to be the acoustic stage. But when we arrived there was this crazy band thrashing stuff out. We were standing thinking if we go on after this band people are gonna start pelting us off the stage. Our stuff is so laid back and melodic; everything else I was hearing at that point was real hardcore rock. But we went on anyway and we got a standing ovation. I kept thinking if people at a concert like that are enjoying this, then if we get a proper gig somewhere they’re really gonna enjoy it.”

Dillon will soon be undertaking a string of such “proper gigs” to promote her eponymous album just released on Rough Trade. Despite this being her debut solo effort, Dillon is no newcomer to the music business. By the age of 15 she had toured Europe with Oige – the group she set up with school-friends – and she then went on to join the much-hyped folk group Equation.

“When I was 19 I got a phone call from Equation. They were looking for a singer to replace Kate Rusby. I always knew that I’d really love to do singing full time but I never thought I’d ever meet the right people or get an open door into it.”

A year later, not happy with the direction she was being pulled, Dillon left taking with her Sam Lakeman. Over the next five years, while signed to Warners, they recorded three albums worth of material, none of which was to see the light of day. Frustrated, they parted company with the label last year and retired to Lakeman’s parent’s studio in Devon.

“We decided we’d just make an album that we really liked,” explains Dillon. “It was very easygoing because we were in a homely environment. We weren’t looking at the clock thinking this hour’s costing us £300. We’d have a few cups of tea, sing a song, go for a walk and come back and do another song.”

The relaxed atmosphere of the sessions permeates the album. From the gentle piano on Black is the Colour to the harmonies on Blue Mountain River, the mood of the album is effortlessly tranquil.

“Recording the album in Devon was great because we had free run of the studio,” explains Dillon. “Sam’s two brothers would be popping in and out and we’d be like ‘In you get and do this fiddle line’. Then we took some equipment over to Donegal where my friend has a holiday house that’s got lovely acoustics. We did the Maid of Culmore looking out over the Foyle.”

She’s keen to stress that the old songs she recorded were not random selections but are as special to her as her own writing: “Two or three of the songs are about emigration. My mother and father have told me about uncles that emigrated to the states. They remember the nights before they left home. They all knew that it was a one way ticket. It’s nice to be able to sing those songs – it really stirs your soul. The fact that these songs have been around for years and years and that these melodies have survived must mean there’s something special about them.”