THE FIRST time she performed in the UK, two-time Grammy nominee Gretchen Peters described the experience as like “stepping through the looking glass”.

The American singer/songwriter, who plays Bingley Arts Centre on Saturday February 20, says the first time she came to the UK she played four gigs with no more than 50 people in the audience.

Yet she felt that “everything that wasn’t working in the States worked really well here".

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Gretchen’s first album, and to celebrate, the 58-year-old from Nashville has released a new album called The Essentials, which she describes as being “retrospective.”

She says: “It seemed like the right time to put together a compilation with selections from past albums. What makes this different and special is that we have added a second disc with some out-takes and demos - things that never really saw the light of day on other albums before.

“There are a lot of people in the UK, who are only familiar with the last two albums, because both Blackbird and Hello Cruel World were higher profile in this country then the ones before that. So it will be a nice introduction to the older songs.”

Gretchen began playing the guitar when she was seven, living just outside New York City, and she moved to Colorado as a teenager.

Her dad was a jazz fan and played Ella Fitzgerald or Django Reinhardt in the house, and while her older sister enjoyed rock, she and some of her other siblings listened to the likes of Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan.

Gretchen said: “I think everything that goes in your ear comes back out at some point. Folk music really appealed to me, because I was a young kid with a guitar and it was the only kind of music that I heard, which I was able to reproduce myself.

“What really attracted me to songwriting was how people like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell would have stories in their songs. I guess I realised that songwriting married my two loves and that was music and words.”

Visit bingleyartscentre.co.uk or call 01274 567983 to book tickets.