Brit-country act Katy Hurt asks Gimme a Break as she launches her debut album tour in Portsmouth

However, Americana/country singer Katy Hurt has persevered, and today finally released a debut album five years in the making.

"It's just been the craziest journey,” she tells The News. “Actually, technically it’s longer than five years, because we wrote some of the songs on the record in 2017. In 2018 and 2019, I was gigging 150-plus shows a year – just constantly on the road, and I had finally saved up enough to fund my album."

With the help of grant from the Canadian province of Manitoba – she’d recorded her early EPs out there – she returned to its capital Winnipeg to record the album in early 2020.

“We recorded the whole album, had a whole tour planned, had a whole release schedule planned for 2020. I had a booking agent, I had a manager, I had the whole shebang ready to do this album.

"I think it was the very first gig we were due to play after coming back was cancelled, and everything from there just fell apart.

"Of course, no one predicted what was about to happen and how that would have a huge knock-on effect. I think after about a year-and-a-half/two years of rescheduling the same shows over and over, my booking agents had to change their entire business model.

"My manager was out in Canada and I couldn't travel, so everything changed.

“You lose the momentum and the joy kind of goes out of it when you're just constantly doing admin and not actually getting to do the thing that you love.”

And the name of the album which is released today?

“It's called Gimme a Break, which we named in the studio in 2020. And I think that was kind of the universe being like, ‘Ah, I see. Let me do that...'” she laughs.

"The 13 tracks on the album, they are exactly what we recorded in 2020. The only thing that we didn't get to do in the first few sessions was there's a string arrangement – that was added in at a slightly later date.

“But other than that, everything is as it was and it's just been on hold and waiting for the the right moment and for me to be in a position where I can then get back on the road and tour properly.

“Funding all of that when your life is music and you can't go and play shows takes a lot longer, and I am super pumped about it.”

Katy is now operating as an independent artist and has had to take other work to enable her to do the music.

"Over the past five years I've had all sorts of random, three-month stints in different day jobs and shift work jobs to arrange around music. I'm very lucky that in this year I've been 'fully music' again, which is incredible.

"I'm finally in a position again with everything kind of – touch wood – back to normal where I can be like, ‘okay, it's time’. I'm finally going to move on from the last few years and put this record out the way that I can.”

She has been busy releasing singles this year to preview the album, highlighting both the rockier and more balladic sides of her output – Seasons, Rather Be, and last month, Before The Ice Melts.

"One of the things I've always struggled with when it comes to music is deciding which side of myself to put at the forefront. My second to last EP, which is no longer on the internet was called Pieces of Me and it was 50 per cent traditional country and 50 per cent modern country.

“I've always had that debate: do I go for the rockier side of things, which is a little bit more edgy, more outspoken? Or do I do the traditional love songs and sad ballads, that I also equally love?

“Trying to find a balance between those things has always been a struggle, because I love them both.

“I love getting to be sassy and put on this persona that I don't get to be in my everyday life and rock out with the band, but also have these heartbroken pedal steel country songs. I think we found a good mix of that for the album.

“I think we finally reached a point where they all belong together, even though they're different facets of who I am as a person.”

One thing that’s instantly noticeable about Katy’s singing voice is that it has an authentic American country twang to it – and it is no affectation.

While born in London, her parents’ work took them to Long Island in the United States, where she lived for the first eight years of her life.

“I went to school, I learned to talk in America with an American accent and that was my childhood.

"Then because my parents' jobs got relocated we moved back to the UK and I got really teased for having an American accent in school, because kids are mean, and they don't understand difference.

“My dad is from Nottingham and he was just like: ‘We'll get rid of that...’ So I actually had speech lessons to learn how to speak with an English accent.”

Now, however: "I can switch back and forth between the two accents, depending on who I'm talking to. When I sing, I go back to my original accent, and sometimes the twang comes out stronger than I intend, because the song calls for it.

“I've had so many people like, ‘oh, it's fake’, and I'm like, ‘well, technically no, this is the real one!’”

Back in 2019 Katy toured with the hip-hop and bluegrass-splicing band Gangstagrass. The tour came through Portsmouth and played at The Wedgewood Rooms. The two acts were, on the face of it, unlikely touring partners, but they formed an enduring friendship.

Last year Katy rereleased one of her old songs, Revved Up remixed by Rench – Gangstagrass’s head honcho, with rapping from the group’s MC R-Son.

“That tour was kind of funny because I was booked on that tour, I guess almost in error, because they had just assumed that Gangstagrass were a country band. And so they were like, ‘oh, you're a country singer, you can do it’. I was like, ‘erm, it's very different....’

“But those guys are just the best. It was so much fun.

"The love that they have. I've never met anyone like them, they get off stage, they go back into the green room, they continue playing, they keep jamming. They're always working on the craft, they're always practicing their instruments.

“It definitely instilled in me the want and desire to just live and breathe it. They got off stage, they started playing traditional bluegrass tunes from like 1910.

“And I'm like, ‘I need to do some work. I need to do some homework!’

“I did that tour with them and we stayed friends. On that tour, after the first few nights, R-Son came out and started doing a rap in one of my songs, which I thought was just the funniest thing ever.

“You never could have told young me that someone would be rapping on one of my songs. So for years now we’ve been joking about it, ‘oh, we'll do a remix one day’.

“And then Rench sent it to me. I had to put it out for fun and as an excuse to have a bit of a throwback to being on tour with those guys.”

While Katy is looking forward to finally touring the full album, its release draws a line under this chapter of her career.

"I want to plan time, without getting too ahead of myself, to start working on something new. Whilst this album is going to be new to everyone else, for me, it's been such a long time of working on it.

"I'd quite like to have a way to plan, to start something completely from scratch, from the beginning again, which is really exciting. So I'll see what happens.

"I now have this huge bank of songs ready to go for album number two. So I'll get started on that!”

Katy starts her album launch tour at Old Portsmouth’s Square Tower, a venue she’s played before with the same promoter, Square Roots Promotions.

"I feel really lucky to be kicking the tour off in a place that we've played before, in a venue that I love so much, because it kind of feels like a safe homecoming in a way that I’m not scared about it.

“I'm super excited to go play there again, but there's always that 'is anyone going to come?' feeling.

"I know I'm in good hands with with coming to see you guys, though, I've been playing shows down there for so long now that it's always just so lovely to see familiar faces.”

Katy Hurt is at The Square Tower, Old Portsmouth on Sunday, May 25. Go tosquarerootspromotions.co.uk