Heidi Talbot: Returning to National Centre for Early Music tomorrow to showcase November album Grace Untold
IRISH folk singer Heidi Talbot previews her November 21 album Grace Untold, a timeless celebration of women’s voices, at the National Centre for Early Music, Walmgate, York, tomorrow (23/10/2025).
Her ninth studio recording unfolds like a tapestry of feminine power, myth and memory in a luminous song cycle that “honours Ireland’s grand heritage of goddesses and the indelible women who have shaped our histories and hearts”.
Born 45 years ago in the rural Irish village of Kill, County Kildare, Heidi began singing in the church choir run by her mother, Rosaline, and enrolled at 16 at Dublin’s Bel Canto singing school. A career in music was set in motion, making her mark in the Irish American folk band Cherish The Ladies as well as solo.
Now comes Grace Untold, a record of stories – whispered and sung, remembered and re-imagined – that forms a woman’s tribute to all women who have inspired, protected and passed the song forward.
This is an album rooted in personal experience and collective lore as Heidi pays tribute to female strength and draws inspiration both from legendary figures and the unsung heroines within her own family.
The warrior queen Grace O’Malley (Gráinne Mhaol), the Celtic goddess Brigid of Co. Kildare and Anna Parnell, leader of the Ladies’ Land League, appear alongside Heidi’s grandmother Kathleen, whose recorded voice opens the closing track. Throughout, themes of resilience, love, ancestry and grace echo across time.
Grace Untold’s songs also reflect on intimacy, family and memory. Like You Were Never Here is a prayer written in grief on a rainy day in Fife; In Shame, Love, In Shame, sung with daughter Molly Mae, reclaims dignity from a story of injustice, and I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen entwines three generations of voices, carrying forward the thread of song.
On her first self-produced album, Heidi also pays homage to early influences such as fellow Irish singer Mary Black, while embracing the quiet companionship of Nanci Griffith’s songwriting, and collaborates once again with long-time creative partner Boo Hewerdine, who will be joining her on stage on the second stage of her autumn travels.
“Walking by the sea has inspired me to write songs,” says Heidi
Here Heidi discusses goddesses, heroines, family and a broken ankle with CharlesHutchPress.
“I WAS supposed to be bringing the album out in October, but I broke my left ankle on a night out in Newcastle, in a bar, where a very drunk man fell on me very heavily. A really random moment. Just band luck,” says Heidi.
“I’ve had surgery; I had pins and metal plates put in there and they have to stay in. When my sister got married, I had to go through the airport scanner and all that metal set it off!”
Heidi has been spending time in both Edinburgh and Fife, where she moved last year after marrying Scottish lawyer Ronnie Simpson in May 2024. “We’re in both places at the moment. We moved to Fife a year ago, but then I broke my ankle, and as I still have my place in Edinburgh, on one floor there, we came back for my rehab,” she says.
“The ankle has nearly recovered. I’ve been signed off by the orthopaedic surgeon. I’m just in physio now. I have days where I look like a pirate, limping along, and then other days when I feel a lot better.”
On stage this autumn, “I’m going to see how it goes, but I’m hoping to be able to sing standing up,” she says. “It’s not so much the standing, but the walking about, at the moment.”
She recorded Grace Untold in May, June and July at GloWorm Recording Studio in Glasgow. “When I damaged my leg, I still had some backing vocals to do, which we did at my house in Edinburgh in the end, with daughter Molly Mae singing and younger daughter Jessica doing a little bit too.
“Molly Mae, who’s nearly 16, wants to do musical theatre. Her dream is to go on the West End stage.”
The artwork for Heidi Talbot’s single, Brigid, the polymath of Celtic goddesses. “She was a bit of an all rounder,” says Heidi, as depicted in the multitude of floating symbols
In doing so, she would be keeping music-making in the family, just as Heidi’s mother passed on her love of music to her daughter.
“It was when I was thinking about writing about inspirational women that I thought about my own mother and my grandmother and the struggles they had in raising a family. How being a woman in this day and age echoes with their day, being a mother, trying to work and keep it all together.
“My mum had nine children and I was number five. They got married at 18, had their first child at 19, but that’s how it was in Irish Catholic families. It was usual to have a lot of children. My grandmother had nine children too. These women were so strong and resilient, and they had to be; there was no choice.”
Heidi continues: “Then you think of all the social aspects, buying a house, having a career, when for my mum that just wasn’t possible. Now a lot of people separate from their partners, and have to try to rebuild their life, and like it or not, the children’s emotional heft falls on the mother, trying to provide everything for everyone.
“I look at my mum and my grandmother and think what would they say? Would they say, ‘it’s crazy trying to do what you have to do’?”
Folklore is at the heart of Grace Untold too. “The first song I recorded, over a year ago, is about Brigid of County Kildare. In my childhood, around February 1, we sang Brigid’s Day at school and we would make St Brigid’s crosses out of rushes or paper.
“We’d hang a piece of cloth outside the house the night before for St Brigid to bless us for the year ahead. The next morning the cloth was brought in and used for blessing the home and healing.
“In the song she has two entities: as a nun and a saint and as a goddess too, of music and poetry, healing arts and prophecy, agriculture and fire – and children and blacksmiths too. She was a bit of an all-rounder.”
The cover artwork for Heidi Talbot’s November 21 album Grace Untold
The song about warrior queen Grace O’Malley (Gráinne Mhaol) emerged from Heidi’s move to Fife, by the sea. “There’s such powerful energy around the sea,” she says. “That’s how I’ll work, taking a good walk, and then I’ll write after that, having cleared my head of worries, quietening all the noise. Walking by the sea has inspired me to write songs.
“Grace O’Malley was a real person who’s had a lot of her history erased because she was a woman. She was a pirate queen, defending her part of Ireland, and there’s a film about to be made about her too. It’s lovely for me to shine a light on women who are inspirational to me, like Grace O’Malley and Anna Parnell, the leader of the Ladies’ Land League.
“Anna has been erased from history, whereas her brother, [Irish nationalist politician] Charles Stewart Parnell has not. She was fighting for people who had been evicted, setting up temporary homes for them.
“She came from a landlord family; she was gentry, but she helped all manner of women. She was a great woman, very strong, and not afraid of men.”
Heidi delved deep into her research. “I did that with Grace O’Malley, because I truly wanted to honour this woman, and it was the same with Anna Parnell, and the more I looked into it, I thought, ‘wow, how is this not taught to children, especially in Ireland?’,” she says.
“I wanted to be authentic in these songs. The metaphysical, ‘witchy’ side of me wants to think they’re standing beside me on stage when I sing.”
The musicians doing that at the NCEM tomorrow will be Innes White, mainly on mandolin and guitar, and fellow instrumentalist Toby Shaer on fiddle, cittern, guitar and flute.
Heidi Talbot, Grace Untold, National Centre for Early Music, York, October 23, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 658338 or ncem.co.uk. Grace Untold will be released on Heidi Talbot Records on November 21.
Heidi Talbot: Playing York, Whitby and Sheffield this autumn
Heidi Talbot: back story
BORN in Kill, County Kildare, Ireland, the fifth of nine children. Sang in church choir run by her mother, Rosaline. Enrolled at 16 at Dublin’s Bel Canto singing school.
Past member of Irish American folk group Cherish The Ladies, from 2002 to 2007, after moving to New York aged 18 to work in bars and clubs for two years. Recorded On Christmas Night, 2004, and Woman Of The House, 2005.
Released nine solo recordings: Heidi Talbot, 2002; Distant Future, 2004; In Love and Light, 2008; The Last Star, 2010; My Sister The Moon EP, 2012; Angels Without Wings, 2013; Here We Go 1, 2, 3, 2016; Sing It For A Lifetime, 2022; Grace Untold, November 21 2025.
Recorded Love Is The Bridge Between Two Hearts EP with John McCusker, 2018; Face The Fall with Arcade (Adam Holmes), 2019, and A Light In The Dark with Roger Tallroth, Sophia Stinnerbom and Magnus Stinnerbom, 2019.
Shared stages and studios with Mark Knopfler, Graham Coxon (Blur), Eddi Reader, Jerry Douglas, King Creosote, Tim O’Brien, Idlewild, Kris Drever, John McCusker, Roddy Woomble and Michael McGoldrick.
Nominated for Folk Singer of the Year, BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards; Best Traditional Song and Best Live Act at Scottish Traditional Music Awards; Best Female Vocalist, Irish Music Awards. Named Composer of the Year at 2023 Scots Trad Music Awards.
On tour from October 10 to November 30. Further Yorkshire gigs will be at Whitby Music Port Festival, October 25, and Firth Hall, Sheffield (with Boo Hewerdine), November 20.
Heidi Talbot’s tour itinerary for Grace Untold