Close-up: Beth Rowley

This happy, West Country girl is emerging as a blues singer to rival the greats

Beth Rowley looks little like the architect of her own songs. On her forthcoming debut album, Little Dreamer, she sounds like an amalgam of Karen Carpenter and Aretha Franklin, a woman of a certain age with a lifetime of neuroses and nicotine dependence behind her. In the flesh, she is 5ft 4ins of largely innocent West Country imp, a face given to easy smiles and a halo of unruly blonde hair. "Where does my voice come from?" the 26-year-old repeats quizzically. "I'm not really sure. Practice?"

Born in Peru, where her Baptist parents were doing charity work in the capital's shanty towns, Rowley had moved back with her parents to their native Bristol by the time she was two, and it was here that she received much of her musical education, thanks to her Harley-Davidson-riding, guitar-playing pastor father.

"At home, it was all Beatles, Roxy Music, Hank Williams and Bob Dylan," she recalls, "while at school it was Mary J Blige and R Kelly. My influences were pretty broad."

Coming of age at a time when Bristol was dominating the UK music scene – think Massive Attack, Portishead and Roni Size – she joined a couple of local acts, "but they just sat around smoking weed", so she decamped to Brighton's Institute of Modern Music, where she trained under former Young Disciples singer Carleen Anderson. She spent the next four years playing any singer-songwriter evening that would have her before securing her record deal last year.

The only chink in Rowley's armour, as far as the authenticity of her blues and gospel is concerned, is her palpable happiness. She has loving parents, an attentive boyfriend and rude health. Where's all the necessary heartache? She smiles and scratches her head. "I'm sure it'll find me eventually."

'Little Dreamer' is out in May on Universal