Born on Dec 4, 1973 in Jessops Hospital, Sheffield, Kate grew up in her beloved South Yorkshire and toyed with acting, or some more technical kind of career in drama, before embarking on her well-documented rise to the nearest folk gets to superstar status.
Music became embedded in her soul as she and her siblings, Joe and Emma, were carted around the folk festivals where mum and dad, Steve and Ann, would be playing in their ceilidh band or dad would be looking after sound systems
The three young Rusbys would use their voices to while away long car journeys. “Mum and dad would sing songs and us kids would sing along, making up harmonies before we even knew what the word meant. There’s just something lovely about voices singing together, even more so when it’s family, and I’m so chuffed that Joe is singing on this record. Siblings have the same vibrato so the sound they make together is almost inseparable.”
Kate has never been allowed to forget that she spoke in an early interview (with me!) of being proud to be a folk singer and to know that it was not a genre for everyone. “It's like a rare diamond,” she said when we spoke again years later. “I like it that people have to look that bit harder for it."
She hasn’t changed, but how does this fit in with her own writing? “I have always said my albums will be a mixture and for now, I still feel that way.
“My first love is traditional song, and there are so many left that I haven’t got through. When all my old ballad books and mum and dad’s brains have been emptied of them, then I might do a record of just my own songs. I have no plan, just drift along and decide on the way.”
Collaborations with other artists – Eddi Reader, Roddy Woomble and Martin Simpson to name a few - are typical of the way Kate’s career has digressed.
