FULL CIRCLE

Barbara Dickson has influenced generations of artists but she looks to them, too, for inspiration. She’s a huge fan of singer-songwriter Emma Pollock and musician-composer Mairearad Green – connecting them with her abiding allies The Corries, Hamish Imlach, Charlie Dore and her hugely missed friend Gerry Rafferty.

“It’s important for me to be aware of what’s going on,” Dickson says.

“Someone like Karine Polwart is a shining example of what you can do with a prodigious amount of talent. She adds more enlightenment to the musical scene in Scotland. I think it’s very important that we don’t get too tied up in our own music, that we speak to the world. Karine does that.”

Polwart, right, in turn, was inspired by Dickson. “I remember seeing Barbara on The Two Ronnies when I was at primary school, and my mum saying, with a degree of pride, ‘She’s from Dunfermline, you know’.

“Her voice was so effortlessly warm, earthy and smoky. She barely looked like she was trying,” Polwart recalls. “In terms of Scottish women singers and musicians, only Annie Lennox and Sheena Easton were comparable in stature at the time. And they were more elusive somehow.

Barbara seemed to be both elegant and a good laugh.

“Much later, I realised she’d emerged from folk clubs and hung out with all the amazing trad singers that influenced my early career.

“I like that she’s long since returned to singing folk songs as well as pop songs, and treats them as equal in value.”