ANYONE who has heard Rosalie Deighton's potent voice and compelling songs will know that music is her life. In fact, there was music in her world even before she was born. "My mother always told me that she played Emmylou Harris records to me when I was still in the womb,'" Rosalie says.

"Something must have got through because she's one of my favourite artists to this day."

Born in Holland to an Indonesian mother and a British father, the family moved to Barnsley, Yorkshire when Rosalie was eight. By then she was already a seasoned performer. Her parents were musicians and a popular attraction at folk festivals playing an eclectic repertoire of bluegrass, country and folk as the Deighton Family. By her fourth birthday, Rosalie was playing spoons with the family band (which also included four other siblings) and soon graduated to mandolin.

The Deighton Family toured all over the world and made five albums for the Green Linnet and Rounder labels. In time, they were performing some of the songs Rosalie had begun to write. But it was her parents band and she determined early that in order to forge her own musical identity, she would go solo. '"At the age of 13 I knew I had to do it on my own. It was just a matter of time," she says. By her mid-teens, she was blossoming so rapidly as a songwriter and a performer that it was obvious the family band would not be able to hold her much longer.

The early '90s were exciting times in British folk music with a whole generation of new performers emerging and one of her first musical excursions away from the family band came when Rosalie and sister Kathleen teamed up with a youthful Kate Rusby, Kathryn Roberts and others to make the album 'Intuition', released on the Fat Cat label in 1993.

Shortly after at the age of 20, she left Yorkshire for London, where she continues to live, and the Deighton Family gracefully retired from the scene. These days, her father is a guitar-maker. Needless to say, Rosalie plays one of his instruments. In London, success appeared to come swiftly. She signed a publishing deal with Chrysalis and a recording deal with EMI soon after. But in a typical record industry scenario, those who had signed her left the label before she had completed an album. A new regime brought with it a new set of musical priorities - and that was that.

After the EMI debacle, Independiente quickly signed Rosalie, releasing the album Truth Drug in 2001. It was a collection of fine songs of both intimacy and power, packed full of winning melodies and sung in a voice that could charm the birds out of the trees. She is currently writing and demoing with Sam Dixon, Boo Hewerdine and Dave Marks. Her new songs are far more raw and stripped down and represent the mature honing of her craft and the culmination of all her experience. There will be another album - but only when she's ready and strictly on her own terms.

In the meantime, connoisseurs of great songwriting are in for a treat at the Queen's Hall, Narberth, on May 25, when Roslie will be performing at the Acoustic Club. She will be joined by three support acts, Caroline Harrison, Andy Marshall and Gary Gary.

The show starts at 7.30 pm and tickets are priced £7 at the door. Tel. 01834 861 212.