SUZANNE Vega is taking stock. Not only has the Santa Monica-born singer-songwriter been re-recording her back catalogue, with the fourth and final instalment, Songs Of Family, set for release next month, but also she is planning to run Living A Creative Life workshops – as well as still mounting tours, the latest of which comes to the Grand Opera House in York on Wednesday.

What will the workshops involve, Suzanne? “We’ll let’s see…um…because of the way I’ve been approaching it, it’s three days of workshops,” she says.

“There’ll be things about how and when I write; the books I’ve read; and how to stay healthy on tour – though what I’ll be talking about is much more fractured than that.

“It’s something that you find out for yourself as you go along, though obviously you have to follow your calling, and the whole process comes from within, though there are books that help to impose a certain amount of discipline, which is necessary.”

You have to “get used to your tools”, she says. “Like having a notebook, which I carry with me at all times – and I‘ve used a memory application to record melodies or simple acoustic versions of songs on my iPhone.

“Sometimes, I’ll find a tune going through my head, so I’ve started to use my iPhone for situations like that.”

Whereas Suzanne was invited to host the workshops (“I’m very much looking forward to seeing who comes,” she says), the series of Close-Up albums of reinterpreted is her own project, which began with Love Songs in 2010.

“I staggered the process of recording them” says Suzanne, who will turn 53 on July 11. “It’s a coherent four-album project but also there are slight differences between each of them.

“I wanted them to hang together as a whole but each with its own identity and sound. Volume One, Love Songs, is probably the most stripped back; the second volume, 2010’s People & Places, has string arrangements, which are really beautiful; and the third one, last year’s States Of Being, is more electronic as it’s about states of being and lots of those songs require distortion.

“The states of being I’m talking about here are tearful or angry or penitent, for which each has its own kind of sound, so that’s the most out-there album.”

The upcoming Songs Of Family volume has a “very folky sound”. “Some of them are major key songs,” says Suzanne. “The family songs are the earliest ones I wrote: the folk songs or the country phase I was going through, believe it or not. Charley Pride, Loretta Lynn…but after that I veered into jazz and rock.”

Such musical experimentation in her teenage years led to her writing songs that “no-one will ever hear”. Nevertheless, Suzanne has since built a canon of songs stretching over 26 years in the public conscience since Small Blue Thing in January 1986.

Marlene On The Wall, Left Of Center, Luka, Tom’s Diner, 99.9 F and many more have now been re-imagined on the aforementioned four thematic albums. “I had a clear vision of beforehand of what I wanted to do, and partly that's because I still tour every year as part of what I do, the main thing in fact,” says Suzanne, who has toured with fellow guitarist Gerry Leonard, David Bowie’s musical director, since 2000.

“The songs have become less and less produced as you really have to reinvent things with just the two of us, and most of that is economic.

“I knew what the songs could sound like on record as I’d rearranged them for the live shows. Some of them I hadn’t done for a while, like Ironbound off the second album, a song about marriage and how, at that time, I was avoiding marriage. Though I then re-married at 46, so that was one of the most reinvented songs I’ve done!”

Not that Suzanne has re-written the lyrics. “The song is still the song,” she says. “I don’t change the lyrics just because the years have passed. Once I’ve written a song and it’s hardened and cooled, it’s hard to re-arrange. I’ve tried to reinvent Marlene On The Wall but it never flies.”

Another reason lies behind the re-interpretations. “My recordings are owned by A&M Records/Blue Note; I was with A&M for 18 years and had a very good relationship with them, but I don’t think I’ll ever get my recordings back though I do have the song rights,” says Suzanne.

“I’ve gotten used to the idea. Once I was dropped by A&M in 2003-2004, it made me realise that they felt my time had passed for them to promote or re-release my records.

“This year is my 25th anniversary of Solitude Standing, but I don’t live in the past, I live happily in the present, and I thought that if I re-record my songs, I can do what I want with them for the rest of my life.”

Over those years, the status of the female singer-songwriter has changed, says Suzanne, “although there are still strange rules for radio play that say you can’t have a woman following a woman on air.

“So many women are making different types of music now and there’s not as much pigeon-holing as there used to be, because there’s so much more variety.

“I’m not just talking about Top 40 acts but someone like Laura Marling, who is very serious; girls who just want to have fun, and every mood in between.”

Suzanne Vega is no longer standing in solitude. She is a trailblazer that others have followed, still making her mark, only less demonstrably than 53-year-old Madonna’s peep show in Istanbul.

• Suzanne Vega plays Grand Opera House, York, on Wednesday, 8pm, supported by Mike Doughty. Tickets update: still available on 0844 871 3024 or atgtickets.com/york