Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, December 15

Vashti Bunyan was just 18 when she discovered the music of Bob Dylan in New York and decided to become a fulltime musician.

Returning to London she was discovered by The Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham and, in 1965, under his direction, released her first single Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind penned by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

But when her music career failed to take off, she quickly became disillusioned with the industry and decided to give it all up.

After making friends with Scots singer Donovan who wanted to set up a community of artists and musicians in the Western Isles, she and her then boyfriend left South London with a horse and wagon and walked to a new life in the Highlands and Islands.

It was a lifestyle change that would see her stay there for around 25 years – only re-emerging into the public arena in 2000 when her 1970 debut album Just Another Diamond Day gained cult status and sold for “ridiculous amounts of money” on the internet – and she started touring again.

But taking stock of the world around her today, the now 73-year-old, who lives in Edinburgh, can sense that feeling of despair around her again – and would head for the hills if she could!

“Back in 1968, I couldn’t bear the way the world was going,” she says.

“By heading to the Highlands it was a way of making my own world – and I learned an awful lot along the way. But certainly the way I was feeling when I took off from London with a horse and wagon, I’m feeling very similar to that now. If I could take off to the hills now I probably would!”

Vashti, who has three grown-up children, says that what pleased her most about the re-issue of her album in 2000 was that young people similar to the age she was when she wrote it more than 30 years earlier “got it”.

It was around this time that she first met Fife-based musician James Yorkston. Having kept in touch over the years, she was delighted when he recently invited her to take part in tomorrow’s Tae Sup Wi’ A Fifer in Kirkcaldy. She’ll be on the bill alongside Ed Dowie and Michael Pedersen.

Labelled the “godmother of freak folk” for her role in inspiring a new generation of folk experimentalists, Vashti has been all over the world since rekindling her music career and has released several other albums – a process she found “incredibly exciting”.

But she laughs when asked how she would describe her music – adding that she hates being pigeonholed as “folk”.

Glasgow guitarist Gareth Dickson will be with her and she also hopes Jo Mango can be there for this rare Scottish show.