“We were in this gorgeous, big house with the wind howling outside,” says Julie Fowlis, talking about how the collaboration between herself, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Karine Polwart came about, ahead of their show at Town Hall on Mon 3 Mar. B:Music caught up with Julie a few hours before her performance with Transatlantic Sessions at Symphony Hall. “We met on the west coast of Scotland for a writing retreat and spent five days together, throwing ideas around and singing songs by the fireside.”

“We found that we felt very comfortable singing together immediately,” Julie recalls. “It doesn’t always happen like that but, when we started singing together, we each found our place immediately, sonically.” It wouldn’t be until a year later that the three of them would be able to meet again and their album, ‘Looking For The Thread’ was born. “We wrote some more and, this time around, we brought producer Josh Kaufman with us, and he helped us shape some of the songs. We went on to Real World Studios where we spent about ten days pulling the album together with an incredible band of musicians. Rob Burger,Chris Vatalaro, Cameron Ralston, Caoimhin O’Raghallaigh and Josh himself – we had an incredible team around us to help bring the songs to life in a different way. It’s one of my favourite recording experiences.”

You were the voice of Meredith in Disney's ‘Brave’. What was the bravest thing you’ve ever done?

"To start singing full time. I only meant to do it for one year and that was… 23 years ago?"

Singing predominantly in Scottish Gaelic and known for her music that is deeply influenced by the Hebridean islands where she grew up, Julie has been surrounded by music since she was a child.

“My earliest musical memories are probably the radio and listening to Gaelic radio at home in the Hebrides and my mum and dad's record collection from the 60s and 70s. All of those things, all the music you hear – I think, as a youngster they really shape what you go on to do and your musical tastes. And for me, as a musician, who I've become.”

This rooted and earthly but, at times ethereal, feeling emerges in her collaboration with Mary Chapin Carpenter and Karine Polwart. “Although we’re coming from quite different backgrounds in many ways, there were immediate threads of air and sea, light, flight, travel and journeying,” Julie recounts. “It just goes to show that it doesn’t really matter what language you’re singing in or what kind of background you have, what kind of style you’re playing – we all sing about the same things. The same things move use.”