Eve Simpson plays with a soft, subtle touch which belies the rigorous, even tough environments she passed through to find her feet as a musician. Hailing from a family of Tyneside social-club singers, she was encouraged to join school choirs, musical theatre and youth-group projects, and express herself on piano and guitar.

‘I was an original Swifty,’ she says. ‘I learned all the guitar parts of the Speak Now album and that’s how I got into songwriting, which I used as a means to cope with teenage brain. Being 13, 14 is so hard. I work with young people a lot now, and part of the reason I do is I remember feeling everything for the first time when you are that age. I still find communicating my feelings really difficult, but give us a piano and half an hour and it’s no problem at all.’ 

Simpson cut her teeth as a performer in the pubs of her native South Shields where, wildly underage, she would be chaperoned by her dad. ‘I was allowed to slip in the back doors and go to the open mics even though I wasn’t old enough,’ she recalls. ‘These were rowdy pubs but that instilled within us the ability to work a crowd and not take any bullshit. That built up my confidence and gave us a bit of grit.’ 

The turning point came when she attended a workshop with the great Texan songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman and was recommended for mentoring by Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell. ‘I’d never played trad music before,’ says Simpson. ‘It made me fall in love with where I was from: folklore and traditional storytelling.’ 

By the age of 17, Simpson was gaining traction and radio play from BBC Introducing but when she moved to Edinburgh and study politics, she struggled to settle away from home. ‘I had a bit of an identity crisis and lost my confidence about what to write about because I didn’t have my foundations and didn’t really know how to present myself onstage.’ 

Simpson took a break from gigging, went home for a spell during covid and poured her heart out in song, eventually releasing a comeback EP, All Her Strange, in 2023. ‘The title track is all about trying to be comfortable with who I was in a new place and that it was OK to feel guilty about it.’ 

Now she’s back, with plans for new writing partnerships and four singles released across the year. Since graduating, Simpson has worked in youth music projects around Edinburgh and conducted mental-health research for The Ivors Academy. ‘I think I just found my people,’ she says. ‘That community music scene goes back to the DIY grassroots side of things that started off for me in South Shields. It’s so nice to find it here. There is just a commonality between Geordies and Scots, especially on the east coast. It feels so homely.’

Eve Simpson plays The Glad Café, Glasgow, Friday 2 February, as part of Celtic Connections.