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All Music Guide:
Folk singer/songwriter Kate Rusby has lived in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, since birth, and grew up in a musical family. Her parents had a ceilidh dance band and introduced her to British folk at an early age. Along with her sister, Emma, Rusby joined the band, singing backup and playing the fiddle. By the time she was 12, Rusby also sang lead and played guitar.
At 15, she debuted at the Holmfirth Festival, and was introduced to another young folksinger, Kathryn Roberts; after playing together live for a while, the duo recorded Kate Rusby & Kathryn Roberts, which won Folk Roots' 1995 Album of the Year award. Rusby also collaborates with the female folk ensemble the Poozies, appearing on their 1997 album Come Raise Your Head and 1998's Infinite Blue. On her own, Kate Rusby has released 1998's Hourglass, and 1999 saw the U.S. release of Kate Rusby & Kathryn Roberts as well as the solo Sleepless. Little Lights appeared in spring 2001. She released 10, a collection of re-recorded and new tunes, as well as a handful of live cuts in 2003, followed by the acclaimed Underneath the Stars in 2004. Girl Who Couldn't Fly arrived the next year. In 2007, Rusby wrote and produced her next solo album, Awkward Annie.
Wikipedia:
Kate Anna Rusby (born 4 December 1973) is an English folk singer and songwriter from Penistone, South Yorkshire. Sometimes known as The Barnsley Nightingale, she has headlined various British national folk festivals, and is regarded as one of the most famous English folk singers of contemporary times. In 2001 The Guardian described her as "a superstar of the British acoustic scene." In 2007 the BBC website described her as "The first lady of young folkies". She is one of the few folk singers to have been nominated for the Mercury Prize.
Career
Rusby was born into a family of musicians in 1973 in Sheffield, England. After learning to play the guitar, the fiddle, and the piano, as well as to sing, she played in many local folk festivals as a child and adolescent, before joining (and becoming the lead vocalist of) the all-female Celtic folk band The Poozies. Her break-through album came in 1995. A collaboration with her friend and fellow Barnsley folk singer Kathryn Roberts was simply titled Kate Rusby & Kathryn Roberts. In 1997, with the help of her family, she recorded and released her first solo album, Hourglass. Since then she has gone on to receive acclaim in her home country and abroad, and her family continues to help her with all aspects of her professional career.
Rusby was also a member of the folk group Equation, later to be replaced by Cara Dillon. The early line-up also featured Rusby's erstwhile performing partner Kathryn Roberts and Mercury-nominated artist Seth Lakeman. Their demo CD, In Session, had a small commercial release.
The previously unreleased song "Wandering Soul" was Rusby's contribution to the soundtrack for Billy Connolly's World Tour of New Zealand, an eight-part BBC television documentary series originally broadcast in November 2004.
A collaboration with Ronan Keating saw Rusby riding high in the UK Singles Chart; their duet "All Over Again" peaked at #6 in June 2006. She also made a vocal contribution to the successful debut solo album of Roddy Woomble, the lead singer of Idlewild. In the same year her cover of The Kinks' "The Village Green Preservation Society" was used as the theme tune to the BBC One television sitcom Jam & Jerusalem. Rusby has written several new songs for the latest series of Jam & Jerusalem, and is credited as responsible for the show's music.
Launched at the 2007 Cambridge Folk Festival, the album Awkward Annie was released on 3 September 2007. "The Village Green Preservation Society" is included as a bonus track.
2008 saw the release of Sweet Bells, an album of traditional Christmas songs interpreted by Rusby.
In 2010, Rusby released the album Make the Light, a collection of self-penned songs, and in 2011 issued a second collection of Christmas songs titled While Mortals Sleep.
Personal life
In August 2001, Rusby married Scottish fiddler and fellow band member John McCusker (formerly of the Battlefield Band), who produced most of her recordings up to The Girl Who Couldn't Fly. They divorced.
Rusby lives with her husband Damien O'Kane and her dog Doris, herself a mainstay feature of Rusby's banter during gigs and appearing on her merchandise. Their first child, a daughter, was born on 15 September 2009. Kate and Damien were married on 12 June 2010. The pair's second child, named Phoebe Summer Rusby-O'Kane, was born at 12.13 pm on 30 April 2012 weighing 7lb 15oz.
