Lucy Grubb: Rising star of UK country/Americana scene heads to Cambridge Folk Club

Coming soon to Cambridge Folk Club will be Lucy Grubb, a rising star on the British Americana scene.

Norwich-based Lucy first started writing songs and appearing at open-mic nights while still a teenager. Now she has three EPs to her name and at present is working on songs for a debut album.

Already a recipient of much acclaim, the singer-songwriter’s 2017 debut EP, 18 Miles, was named Best UK EP of the Year by country music site Belles and Gals, while her second effort, Dear Walter, was awarded five stars by country music magazine Maverick.

Though Norfolk born-and-bred, Lucy also lived in the capital for a time. “When I was in London, I was doing a lot of solo performances,” she explains, “and kind of treading the grassroot venues, trying to make a few contacts and connections there.

“But since I’ve been back in Norfolk, I have a band that’s based here – so I’ve been playing a couple of shows with them, which has been lovely, playing in the studio with them, and we’re trying to currently lay down some demos for my debut album.”

Lucy, who has performed at various well-known UK festivals such as Glastonbury, Latitude, AmericanaFest, and the Cambridge Folk Festival, says she would “love” for the album to be out next year, but admits that it “might be 2025”.

She says: “Since I started taking this music thing seriously, I’ve released three EPs. “The last one, Waste My Time, was a couple of years ago, and yeah it’s been a steady progression for me to be releasing music in that way, because I think EPs are quite non-committal and a nice thing to release to kind of show where you’re up to in your career. But I think naturally an album is probably the thing that I’m aiming for next.”

It was Lucy’s grandfather who first got her into that wonderful country music sound. “He was very into old-school country music,” she notes, “like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson... so I spent a lot of time with him listening to that kind of music.

“And I think when he passed away, I kind of felt a duty to maybe incorporate a bit of that into what I was doing at the time, and I think it morphed into my way of expression, I guess, and that was all around the time I was 17, 18, trying to figure out the style of music that I wanted to play.

“I think it was just a natural progression for me to incorporate some of that old-school country. Over the years, it’s just been taking bits from British folk music, taking bits from American country music, and calling it my form of British Americana.”

Lucy, a fan of fellow singers Sierra Ferrell, Courtney Marie Andrews, Kacey Musgraves, and Jade Bird (“Paul Simon is probably my biggest influence when it comes to songwriting”), was playing open-mic nights in Norwich from around the age of 14.

“It was just for the fun of being up there and performing,” she recalls, “and playing a couple of originals and a cover – and I would do that every week for years.

“That was what I enjoyed doing; I didn’t take it particularly seriously… I went away to college, did my A-levels, and then decided I wanted to do a year at music college, which was when I went to Access [accesscreative.ac.uk], which is a brand of music college – it’s more of a creative college now.

“Then after that year at Access, I recorded the first EP and then I decided that this is something that I wanted to do as a career and started taking it a bit more seriously.”

Lucy has performed in Cambridge before – at the Junction, as part of a songwriters’ circle earlier this year, and at the Folk Festival in 2019, where she headlined The Den stage on the Friday night as part of a trio (“it was just amazing, I always say it’s probably one of the best gigs I’ve ever played, to one of the best crowds – I would love to play there again”).

She has never appeared at the Cambridge Folk Club before, but will be doing so – alongside Roswell, a folk duo from London – on Friday, September 29.

Tickets are priced at £10 (door), £9 (advance) and £8 (members). For more information, visit cambridgefolkclub.co.uk. For more on Lucy, go to lucygrubb.com.