WHEN it comes to songwriting, Gretchen Peters is right up there among country music’s elite.

The Grammy–award winner was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in October recognising a career which has seen her work covered by artists as diverse as Neil Diamond and Martina McBride.

Next month she comes to Manchester as part of a UK tour based following the release of her latest album Blackbirds.

With such an impressive back catalogue, when critics have raved about Blackbirds as being her best album yet, you know that something special has been produced.

“I’ll be bringing over my biggest band to date,” said Gretchen. “The album just needs that fuller sound.”

Blackbirds features perhaps Gretchen’s most raw material yet with its twin themes of death and mortality.

“I think in our culture there’s a tendency to avert our eyes to the ageing process,” she said.

“We act as though it’s not going on around us and pretend it won’t happen to us.

“I think for me at my age (Gretchen’s now 57) as both a person and a writer I felt it was right for me to look straight at the subject and having done some I now feel I have a very healthy relationship with my own mortality.”

Certainly the rave reviews have made favourable comparisons with the likes of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, artists who have not shied away from seemingly taboo subjects.

Much of the album was recorded ‘as live’ and featured a who’s who of the country scene with guest vocalists including Suzy Bogguss and Jason Isbell.

“It’s a much more aggressive sound than perhaps I’m known for,” she said, “but given the subject matter that was what was needed.”

Many of Gretchen’s songs have either been written for or picked up by other artists.

“I have learned not to be precious about my songs,” she said.

“I have also been very lucky that my songs have been sung by some pretty remarkable people.

“You have to accept that some people will look at a song differently than you and it can be a really nice surprise when you hear what they have done with it.”

Given her success both with live shows and with writing does Gretchen see herself as primarily songwriter or performer?

“My musical upbringing was based around listening to sing-songwriters such as Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon,” she said. “You would never say that either of them was just a singer or a songwriter and I look at myself in the same way.”

With her 2012 album Hello Cruel World and now Blackbirds. Gretchen is clearly at the height of her songwriting powers and has developed a unique quality which is hard to define.

“I look at myself as the first member of my own audience,” she said. “Maybe because it’s I’m older but I now write about what I would be interested in hearing and I think that the fans appreciate that and have found that it interests them too.”

n Gretchen Peters, Royal Northern College of Music Manchester, Thursday, April 2. Details from 0161 907 5200.