FOR someone who has appeared on stage for more than four decades, it’s hard to believe that Joan Armatrading still gets nervous. But until now, the 63-yearold star, whose most memorable hits include Drop The Pilot, Love and Affection and Me, Myself and I, has always appeared as part of a band.

This year she has decided the time is right to appear solo and admits it is something of a step into the unknown.

“I am incredibly excited, but I am not going to deny I am nervous,” says Armatrading. “I am always nervous when I do gigs, but this is different because I have got nowhere to hide. I can’t put the guitar down and have everyone listen to the band. I haven’t played the keyboards on stage since the mid-1970s, so that will feel very different.

“There’s quite a lot of stuff to get used to. All the songs were written on the guitar and with the piano, but then I would do the arrangements and work out all the parts. Now I have got to rearrange them so that they work with just me.”

Armatrading is confident the format will work, but ays that did not stop her from worrying.

“Just because people have turned up, got their ticket and are sitting down, there’s no guarantee that at the end of the song they are going to applaud,” she says.

“It is nerve-wracking to be up in front of a lot of people and perform. It’s not an easy thing to do. This might be too big a word, but it takes courage to do it. Half-an-hour, 15 minutes before I go on stage I am incredibly nervous. I am incredibly nervous as I walk onto the stage and I pick up the guitar. Once I start to play and I have sung a few bars I am usually fine.”

When I spoke to her Armatrading was still putting the finishes touches to the set list.

“I am really in trouble actually,” she says. “I have got 14 songs that I am pretty certain of.

The rest? It’s like a nightmare.What I am going to do – for instance with Love and Affection – is recreate the string part and record it and play it as a backing track,” she says. “It will still be a one person thing because I have recreated it. It is important to have a bit of colour in the show, otherwise you are just going to have guitar and piano for an hour-and-a-half.”

Armatrading says this tour is as much about making memories for herself as it is for those in the audience.

“I love the way the audience reacts, but I don’t always get to see all of them. On some of these smaller gigs I will get a better sense of the whole audience,” she says. “You know when the whole audience jumps up and applauds, but you don’t necessarily get the sense that that person in row 27 is doing that. I have a feeling I might get that and that’s what I am looking for.”

Many people of Armatrading’s age are looking to wind down their careers, but not her.

“I am alive, that’s it, you don’t need much more,” she says. “You wake up in the morning, your eyes open, get out of bed, get changed, go down and get some breakfast, go out for a walk, meet people. That’s literally all you need.

“I still write about the same things – people, love and emotion, communication, friendship and aspirations. It’s all about how people deal with people.

“I don’t think it’s spiritual. Nature is beautiful, wonderful. As much as some people can communicate with animals and find an affinity with them and sometimes profess to love them more than people, if you were in dire straits you wouldn’t turn to your dog, you would turn to a person. If you needed help because you had injured yourself, you wouldn’t turn to your dog. I love dogs, but you have to know what’s going on.

“Apart from nature, everything we have on this planet is down to somebody dreaming it, thinking ‘I wonder if I did that, what would happen?’. We have got the car, the motorbike, the aeroplane, the washing machine, the traffic light – whatever it is we have got it is because a person had this dream.”

Armatrading says she is not bothered if she is remembered, just so long as her songs are.

“If you look at a song like Love and Affection or Drop the Pilot, at the time of writing it you think, ‘I am sure people will like this song’, but Love and Affection was 1976, it’s 2014 now.

You don’t think people will still be talking about it, that doesn’t really enter your head,”

she says. I’d like people to remember my name, but I almost don’t care, so long as they care about my songs.”

  • Joan Armatrading plays Durham Gala Theatre on November 9. Tickets are £29.50.
  • galadurham.co.uk or 03000-266600