Laura Cantrell’s road back to Nashville has certainly been a circuitous one. In the 1980s, the American singer and radio host, brought up in the Tennessee capital, left to attend university in New York. Amid the yuppies and power dressing, Cantrell was more interested in country music. She indulged her passion with a sideline in radio, first at Columbia University’s WKCR, before landing a slot on Jersey City’s free-form WFMU.

Her award-winning Saturday afternoon show, The Radio Thrift Shop, has been on air since 1993. In the US, Cantrell is one of the best-known country music DJs, and it was considered quite a coup for Radio Scotland to commission six special episodes of the show to be broadcast from Nashville when Bryan Burnett, the station’s regular country music host, took a break.

Last year Radio Scotland broadcast four episodes of Cantrell’s show from a studio in Jersey City. The shows proved so popular that the station decided to commission more this year and, adding to the authenticity, they based Cantrell in Nashville, the heart of country. For Cantrell, it is an opportunity to return home to interview her favourite musicians, including Merle Haggard, Cowboy Jack Clement and Joy Lynn White. But Cantrell is a country singer in her own right, even if not everyone in Nashville knows it. The 38-year-old got her big break in Glasgow. In 2000, she released her debut album, Not the Tremblin’ Kind, on Spit & Polish Records, a small Glasgow-based label owned by Francis MacDonald, who has drummed for Teenage Fanclub, BMX Bandits and alt-country band the Radio Sweethearts.

“Francis and I had a mutual acquaintance,” says Cantrell. “One day, I got a call from him out of the blue. He said: ‘I really like these songs. I think you should record an album, and I will release it.’”

Not the Tremblin’ Kind was released to critical acclaim. When John Peel announced on his radio show that it was his “favourite record of the last 10 years and possibly my life”, Cantrell was Americana’s hottest property.

“I didn’t have any delusions that signing to this little Scottish label was going to change my life, but it did,” she laughs. “I never cease to be amazed by the impact of that John Peel quote. I could be on tour in Atlanta, Georgia or Santa Cruz, California and every single time someone will say, ‘I discovered you through John Peel.’ That’s maybe something you’d expect in the UK, but not Phoenix, Arizona.”

When she talks of Peel, her tone is strained. She flew to London last October to perform at his tribute concert at Queen Elizabeth Hall. She feels an enormous debt to the man she once took record shopping in New York.

“Bob Dylan played one of my songs on his radio show last week and read out the Peel quote, which just goes to show where it’s taken me. I sat there thinking, ‘What planet am I on, did they hire someone to impersonate Bob Dylan and play a trick on me?’” Being namechecked by Dylan is just the latest personal milestone in Cantrell’s career. She released her third album, Humming by the Flowered Vine, last year. Without MacDonald’s intervention, things could have been very different.

Both her parents were lawyers, and although Cantrell flirted with following in their footsteps, she eventually opted to read literature. Before leaving for New York, she took a summer job at Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame.

Her love of country greats Patsy Cline and Kitty Wells imbues her with what she feels are virtually impossible standards to live up to. Though critics heap praise on her fragile, plaintive vocals and the storytelling quality of her songs, Cantrell’s albums invariably feature an equal measure of her own material and cover versions.

“There are some folks so purely talented in one department, and that’s overwhelming for me. I don’t feel like that kind of artist.”

Despite any lingering self-doubts, music will always come first for Cantrell. In 2003, she was warned against giving up her day job as a business manager at Bank of America, but, she says, she has never regretted the decision. “I had to make a choice because, although my bosses were understanding, I was never going to be able to give music my full attention as long as I was working full-time. I had the obvious worries, like how I was going to pay the rent, but I think it was the right decision in the end.”

Her day job is now looking after her seven-week-old baby girl, Isabella. Her husband is Jeremy Tepper, with whom she runs the New York-based label Diesel Only, which released her first two albums in America.

“Having a child was something I intended doing a little earlier, but because of the touring and the recording we put it off for a while.”

Juggling music, radio and motherhood might be a daunting prospect for some, but Cantrell is already planning for the day when she can take her daughter on tour.

Radio Thrift Shop is broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland on Mondays at 8pm and repeated at the same time on Sundays

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