VERY few artists release albums around their 80th birthday. And still fewer embark on a new musical direction as Peggy Seeger has on latest album Everything Changes.

The album is the folk legend’s first recorded with a band, put together by her son Calum MacColl, and her first collection of all-contemporary songs, the majority penned or co-written by Seeger herself.

“It is a big departure,” she admits as she travels to a late-scheduled appearance on Later With Jools Holland.

“Originally it was going to be a CD of my past performances, collecting my more popular songs selected from various records. My sons said ‘Why not do something different?’”

With the band providing the music, Seeger was able to concentrate on her vocals.

“We realised I sing more freely when I’m not playing,” she says. “I was fortunate I had my second bad back accident at the same time, so I was able to lay down and work on the songs as purely vocal pieces. It was interesting – I loved working with the band.”

In the past the half-sister of late folk pioneer Pete Seeger and former wife of English traditional song performer Ewan MacColl has described her voice as more characterful than beautiful.

“I don’t have a beautiful voice like Joan Baez or Judy Collins,” she says. “I don’t have that lovely bird-like sound that I associate with a beautiful voice. Edith Piaf didn’t have a classically beautiful voice, but she had character. Louis Armstrong was able to convey so much when he sang with that wonderful vocal he had.

“We make the best of what we have. With some of my folk song records like Peacock Street it is half-sung, half-spoken, or on a song like John Gilbert Is The Boat I sing down at the bottom of my range. With a character voice you can willingly make it sound ugly or out of tune to put the message of the song over. It means I can sing a wide variety of songs.”

Throughout her career Seeger and activism have gone hand-in-hand. Her radio ballads, documentary-style recordings with her late husband, investigated such subjects as the closure of the mines, the building of the first motorway and the rise of the teenager. Throughout her career her songwriting has seen her tackle sexism – as on her 1958 classic Gonna Be An Engineer – ecology, nuclear power and domestic violence, but she has also used humour to tackle lighter subjects – such as fighting back against cigarette smokers by passing wind.

“Activism is not necessarily aggression,” she says. “Hopefully we are disseminating information, using what skills we have to help create a better world.

“Music reaches the parts of the body that nothing else reaches. It stimulates part of the brain devoted to energising the recipient.

“We were creating music almost before speech – when people used to grunt together to lift a log, or sang sea shanties. It was the beginning of music. When you think the Government is cutting the arts it is frightening – humans need music.

“When you get people to laugh it relaxes them – often their guard goes down. People like to laugh together and cry together. The song I’m going to sing on [Later With] Jools Holland is about people following gods and goddesses, about our need for icons, to have people around we can adulate.”

She laughs at the idea of a folk revival – pointing out folk has been going on since the 1950s and has never stopped.

“At one point there were 3,000 folk clubs in this country. I remember there was a year when Ewan and I played 100 dates in a year going to folk clubs and arts clubs. Each had local singers who would bring other singers in.

“It’s just the media has happened to pick up on folk again – it will drop it very soon.”

This latest tour, which launches at the Ropetackle Arts Centre, sees Seeger back on the road with her sons Calum and Neill MacColl for the first time in 30 years.

“From the time they were teenagers they used to go on tour with us to Sweden, Germany and the US,” says Seeger. “They asked me what I wanted for my 80th birthday and I said I would like to tour with them for a week. It has turned into a month of engagements.

“We are enjoying rehearsing. Neill is 56, Calum is 52 and I’m 80 – how’s that for a trio?”

Doors 8pm, tickets £18.50. Call 01273 464440.