FROM busking on the streets of Glasgow to wining three BRIT Awards Eddi Reader’s career has been quite a journey.

The prolific songwriter has always had music in her life and with the release of her latest record Cavalier gaining critical acclaim, Reader shows no signs of slowing down.

However, with 12 full-length records under her belt, the Scottish singer is still very humbled when it comes to the opportunities afforded to her.

She tells The Gazette: “I just go with the flow. Playing music has just been my instinct since I was three and I just do the thing that nature intended me to do.

“Thankfully there is a crowd that tends to pay attention to what I do, so I don’t need to train to be a waitress yet.

“Music just has a hold on me and it had allowed me to go on this amazing journey.”

Growing up in Glasgow, and later north Ayrshire, the 59-year-old was always surround by music in some shape, and even at a young age she knew it was something she was destined to do.

She added: “There was a whole group of adults who were singing around, when I was growing up. I remember there was a man who would walk the streets with a cloth cap just singing hoping that someone would chuck him a coin.

“I just remember being surrounded by song.

“I have memory memories of music being live and in your face and feeling the power that music can possess.”

It wasn’t until her teenage years that Reader decided to get out and play music herself, having been singing around the house for year, but busking and playing small Glaswegian pubs was a different matter for the folk artists.

“I had no confidence whatsoever when I started,” Reader added.

“There was one show where i broke a glass in my mouth, I was so nervous having a glass of lemonade and my teeth were chattering so bad that it actually shattered the glass in my mouth.

“But my obsessiveness of enjoying a show helped me overcome those nerves.”

Now, Reader is a highly praised artist in her genre, and has taken the approach of doing everything for herself and seeing success from it.

Reader is of the belief that music should be about the connection between artist and audience.

She said: “I never thought the worlds music and business should be in the same sentence.

“If a musician is the bottom of the food chain that is not right as we are the ones who are creating this art form. It is between them and the audience.”

Eddi Reader will be sharing her brand of folk music with a Haymarket audience on Tuesday, 23 October.

For more information and tickets, go to anvilarts.org.uk/whats-on/eddi-reader.