Hello Martha. Now you're hitched, will all your songs be about domesticity and the trials of married life?

Ha ha, I don't think so. I think that there's enough sadness and desperation and pain and strife in the world to talk about. And there's enough of it in married life as well. Relationships are difficult. Obviously I would never want to use Brad, my husband, as some sort of fodder for songs, but what I like to sing about, these feelings of love and loss are things people identify with. And the minute I've sung the song, it's no longer about me or the subject I initially wrote it about. It's really about the listener and who they want it to be about.

With this record, I was very concerned that all the songs be strong. So I had to really flex my songsmithing muscle more than I ever had before. It was a great relief to look outside of myself and not always just me, me, me, which I think the first record has because I wrote it in my early twenties. I was living in a bubble and now I feel like I'm living in the big, scary bad world and there's death and decay and war and old loves... there's plenty to talk about.

Should those lost loves really be on your mind, now you're happily wed?

But I think that old loves don't die. There's been a couple of people in my life that represented my need to struggle with love, and maybe my feeling of abandonment, to be really pop psychology. There were two or three people that I was in love with that I couldn't have because they wouldn't return the favour, but they were my closest friends, I have a history of that. No longer! I've found someone who actually wants and likes me and accepts me...

Do you still write songs for the same reasons you started?

Yeah, I do. I think I write songs because I have an overwhelming feeling about something that I feel like I can shed some light on. The job of a songwriter is to describe what everyone is feeling but just can't put into words. I think I have that willingness and hopefully ability to do that.
Also, singing and playing the guitar is the only thing I know how to do. I don't have a degree.

On the song 'Jimi', you sing: "Sometimes I feel like my Dad for leaving her sad and alone". Is that a tough line to sing?

It's very hard to sing. I think it's a really beautiful line. I remember, I left home and I wrote 'Jimi' - I wrote it a long time ago - and I did feel like I was abandoning my mother, a woman who's been abandoned by her husband and now abandoned by her kids.
Obviously, when you're in your early twenties you might have a little bit more of a "f**k you" attitude towards your parents. But I've gotten a lot closer to my mother recently, I take her on the road and Rufus takes her on the road and I put her on my records. So I don't feel as bad about it now but I certainly felt bad about it then.

Whenever we've seen you play a gig, someone has always shouted, "I love you Martha". What is it about you that provokes that response?

I think I'm asking for love! Maybe I seem desperate. And maybe because when I always played with Rufus I was very much the second violin in the show and people started doing it then, sort of: "We love you - the little one!" Making me feel important.
Also, I think that me opening myself up completely and being naked in many ways, emotionally, demands the same response from an audience so that it turns into almost like a f**king sexual relationship or something. The more I empty myself and give, I can see, in the audience, the more I'm getting back. It's a nice bodily fluid exchange!

The tour will definitely sell out now.

Look out for part two of this interview where Martha will be discussing smoking, drinking and Jesus - coming soon!

Hear the new album and get a free download at: www.iknowyouremarried.com