ELIZA Carthy is on the move. Not only moving house from Edinburgh to a rural place with a barn and some land 20 miles outside the Scottish capital, but the folk singer and fiddler with the Yorkshire roots is touring home and abroad.

A fortnight ago she was in Barcelona for the weekend, on a British Council project, doing workshops and playing a show. Next Wednesday at 7.30pm, she joins her mother and father, folk luminaries Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy, for a sold-out Waterson:Carthy gig at the National Centre of Early Music in York, promoted by the Black Swan Folk Club.

Then she will be off to Barcelona once more. This time she will be teaching fiddle to advanced students and talking about English folk music at the university - "I can get by in Spanish, my Spanish isn't bad", she says - before returning home for dates with the Eliza Carthy Band.

Oak House, Pocklington, awaits her on May 6 at 8pm when she will perform with Ben Ivitsky, Jon Boden and John Spiers (tickets £10, tel 01759 301547).

She gave this phone interview en- route home from Barcelona, while stopping off at her parents' house in Robin Hood's Bay to plan the Waterson:Carthy set list. "We're sorting out a mixture of old stuff - traditional material, I mean! - with our favourites from the past four albums and some new favourites," says Eliza. "In fact we're hoping to make a live album, so we may well be recording the York show."

Eliza has spent ten years as a professional and can reflect on a progression that has always been in the public eye. "I'm 27 now; I've been doing gigs for 14 years, ten of those as a professional musician," she says.

"I was very intuitive at the start and I'm still intuitive. Everything has been about learning about my breathing, my control, my hands when playing the fiddle - and at the end of your 20s, you need to learn about control of your body."

She recalls her early steps. "At 14, everything you do is mortifying and I'm surprised that I used to stay on stage so long - but I do remember standing behind my mum at one gig, only for one song, when we were having a laughing fit!"

Given that Eliza was joining the family business, there was an added pressure. "I had a terrible amount to prove to the folk world at first: they either thought I was a young upstart who they wanted to have nothing to do with or that I was just riding on my parents' reputation or that I was rubbish," she says.

How times have changed. "At 27, I'm very lucky. I don't have anything to prove. I can just make good music and I can still innovate and endeavour towards new things, and I don't care if people don't like it," says Eliza. "You just have to be honest with yourself and your music."

Then again, how much have times changed? Despite Eliza establishing a reputation for experimentation, fertilising folk with dub on her Red Rice double album, the folk fraternity did not look kindly on her signing to a major label, Warner, for Angels And Cigarettes.

"When I came out of the Warner deal, I learned that the folk scene was not as comfy a place as I thought. Many turned their back on me," she says. "When the scene is run by older people, there's a suspicion of young performers, like me and Bill Jones, and that's an unfair prejudice."

Eliza has received a series of awards - not least Best Album, Best Traditional Song and Folk Singer Of The Year at the BBC Radio Folk Awards - for last year's album of traditional English song, Anglicana. Yet there is sting in the tail.

"I'm obviously very happy that it's had such a rapturous response but I've had people come up and say 'welcome home' and that makes me very angry because during that Angels And Cigarettes period, I made the Dinner album with Martin Green, two Waterson:Carthy albums and I produced my mother's Bright Shiny Morning record," she says.

She changes her mind about anger. "No, it doesn't make me angry. It makes me tired when people come up and say 'This is where you belong'. I despair, but who cares, it's not important. Why should they pay attention to my life?"

Undaunted, Eliza is more than halfway through recording a second album in the pop style of Angels And Cigarettes to be titled Dreams Of Breathing Under Water... and yes, she is planning another traditional album with her band too.

Updated: 09:22 Friday, April 18, 2003