LiveDaily contributor Stacy Jean spent a few minutes with Emma Pollock [ tickets ], discussing The Delgados, her homeland, and her hectic touring schedule.

Scottish singer/songwriter Emma Pollock, former member of the now-defunct Delgados, just wrapped a stateside tour in support of her recently released solo debut, "Watch the Fireworks."

LiveDaily contributor Stacy Jean spent a few minutes with Emma Pollock, discussing The Delgados, her homeland, and her hectic touring schedule.

LiveDaily: This is LiveDaily Sessions. I'm your host, Stacy Jean, and I'm here with Emma Pollock today. How's it going? I know you're only in town for a day, right?

Emma Pollock: Yeah. It's always like this, you know. You get into these incredible cities that I get really, really excited about visiting. I mean I've been here quite a bit actually with the Delgados and then when I realized I was coming to a lot of these places again, I was really, really pleased and then you realize that when you look at the schedule, unless you get up at the break of day, you really aren't going to have much of an opportunity to see anything except the block or two beside the venue...

And the cab. The crazy cab ride that you had.

And from the cab window, so that's pretty much how it goes. You know, when you look at a touring schedule of any country, you know, your friends look at it and they'll say, "Wow! You're going to so many amazing places. That's great!" and they're thinking about what they would do if they were there on holiday, but of course, you know, this is all about the show and everything around it so the kind of touristy thing has to take a back seat.

And you just recently, did you just get off tour with the New Pornographers?

Yeah, that's true.

How did that go?

It was fantastic. It was really, really good. It was the first time I've ever done a support tour in the U.S. and it was just so lovely to be able to play with them because I'm such a huge fan but also in front of their audiences. They were playing to about a thousand people a night, 1200 people sometimes and it's a really luxurious position to be in, to be given the opportunity to play in front of someone else's audience particularly when you begin to realize that that audience is quite receptive to what I'm doing because the New Pornographers and I, we both write pop songs essentially...

Yeah, and they have a great fan base too.

Yeah, they're great. I say pop songs but that's not really the best word, I mean, I think we both, they and I both write a lot more melancholy songs as well but for the most part it's pretty upbeat, pop songs as opposed to guitar songs. Their audiences were really receptive and I was absolutely delighted because these things can go either way. They can go...I've heard some horrendous stories of bands going on tour with really, really massive acts and getting booed offstage.

Live performance of "Limbs"

So you just played for us "Limbs."

Yes.

Really pretty song. What was the inspiration behind it?

Well actually it came from a passage in a book. There's a book called The Book of Revelations written by Rupert Thomson. It's a work of fiction. It's a story about a dancer who's kidnapped in Amsterdam by fans, but they're not really nice fans because they just want to put him in a room and tie him up. It's all a bit weird. It's really odd, but I loved it. I loved the book. He does eventually escape. It's kind of got a happy ending. But there's a passage in the book, he's a dancer, and there's a passage in the book where he talks about visiting an old teacher of his who was a female dancer and she's dying and it's just a really poignant episode in this book where he comments on how incredible it is to see the illness change her body in the way that it has done and how she's lost all the strength she had and how it completely just took her over. It just kind of stayed with me because someone close to me at that point had died in my family and I guess it just struck me at that point as being quite...it just had an impact.

Since you're on tour now, are you finding there's a lot of time that inspires new material because I know there's a lot of downtime in between shows?

Yeah, there is but I don't find it particularly easy to write on tour to be honest because my head's usually racing with all of the practicalities involved in the shows so I don't find it that easy to write on tour. Writing is funny to be honest because you can think you're not in the mood but then you'll sit down and five minutes later you've come up with something that will eventually become a song. There's absolutely no predicting when you're going to have that little bit of success that might lead to a song. I have been working on a couple of new things on this tour in soundchecks, but I guess any serious writing wouldn't start again until next year because I've got to tour the U.K. when I go home.

Wow. How much longer do you have in the States for touring?

Oh, I go home tomorrow. The band and I go home tomorrow. We've been here for awhile though; we've been here for five weeks.

Yeah. So this is your last show?

Yeah, my last show tonight.

Wow. It's going to be a good show.

Yeah! I'm really excited.

Have you played at the Echo before?

No, I haven't but I know the American Music Club are playing support so that's amazing because I think they're great.

So I know you have a family. You have a son, right?

Yeah.

So how do you get through such long tours and, you know, in those moments when you're homesick and you miss your family...how do you get through that? Is there anything that you do to comfort you?

I phone them. If I can find internet. I've been trying to use internet phoning on this tour but it hasn't worked terribly well. But yeah, Paul and Ben came over on the tour bus for a week which was amazing. They were on the tour for a week, and we went to Canada and Missoula, MT. We came over the border and went to Missoula and Chicago. Yeah, we went a few places so it was great and Ben didn't get to bed early any night at all so we're probably dreadfully irresponsible parents, but I don't know, he's five and I'm sure he'll get over it.

He's five? I don't know, that's pretty cool.

Yeah, Ben absolutely loved it.

I would have loved to have gone on tour when I was a kid!

Yeah, I mean kids just accept anything that they're given. They pretty much just go, "oh, okay" and then they look for their toys and that's it!

Are there any songs that you particularly enjoy playing at these shows or the shows that you've been playing here in the States? Are there any songs that seem like the crowd is more receptive to?

Well the first track that, the first song that we usually open with, which is the one I'm going to play next, "If Silence Means That Much to You," it seemed to go down pretty well because a lot of people would come up to the merchandise stall afterwards and say, "So is this the album, has this got the first song on it that you played tonight?" So I suppose that's a bit of an indicator, yeah.

That's great. I think we're going to hear some more music from you? What song are you going to play?

"If Silence Means That Much to You."

Live performance of "If Silence Means That Much to You"

So, you're Scottish?

Yes.

Let's talk a little bit about growing up in Glasgow. How was that?

Well, I didn't grow up there.

Oh, you didn't?

No, I grew up in a town...well actually, if truth be told, I was born in Perth, Scotland, which is east coast, but I was only there until I was two and then I moved to various places. I've lived in an awful lot of different houses actually because my mom and dad moved around a lot, but I mostly grew up in Castle Douglas which is a small market town in southwest Scotland. It's a hundred miles south of Glasgow and I moved to Glasgow when I was 18 years old to study. So Glasgow's pretty much my home because I've been there longer than I've been anywhere else in the whole country.

At what age did you start playing music?

Actually quite late, when I was 17 years old.

Seventeen?

Well, wait a minute. No, that's not true. I started learning violin when I was ten and then I gave up when I was 14 years old.

What was the moment that you decided, "I want to be a musician. This is what I want to do with the rest of my life," or did it happen organically?

It was quite organic, yeah. I mean I never had a flash of inspiration that...

It kind of fell into your lap?

Yeah, well, you know...I studied at university. I didn't do music, I did science, and I graduated and I thought, "I don't want to do that anymore" because I was entirely sick of it and I thought at that point I had started going to an awful lot of gigs with Paul, Paul Savage who I'm now married to and who was drummer in Delgados and on this album as well...we were going to an awful lot of shows and I just got really, really excited about the prospect of starting to play. I bought an acoustic guitar and started writing my own songs when I was 20 or 21 years old, and then eventually Paul was playing guitar and eventually he introduced me to two of his friends and the Delgados were formed. It was all really, really simple. I didn't have to put adverts in papers. I didn't have to put signs up in shops. It just suddenly seemed to be there.

So do you write most of, all the material on the album? Did you write all the songs?

Yes.

I wanted to ask you one question that I read in an interview. You were quoted as saying that you'd rather write a timeless record than a record which is trying to capture a zeitgeist. Can you explain that a little bit more as to what you mean behind that?

Well, because there are records that are clearly all about the time we're in and the style of music that's being, that's basically being lauded at this point. I mean classic examples of that are pretty much most of the '80s pop bands who discovered synthesizers and drum machines and now those records are so dated it's hilarious, but a lot of the stuff that was written in the '70s doesn't even sound as dated as that because it was just sung right. So I don't know, it's just a personal thing. I guess I'm just a fan of a good song.

I also heard that you're a big fan of '60s pop songs.

Yeah.

Dusty Springfield?

Yeah. Stuff like that. Yeah, just amazing songs. I just really, really love great...a lot of the stuff written in the '50s and '60s was, a lot of it was orchestral pop. They had these fantastic songs, huge productions. Those songs are still as great to listen to now as they were back then.

Is there any particular artist right now that's really inspiring you or that you're listening to a lot?

I really like Regina Spektor. I think she's fantastic. I bought her last album. And there's a band in Glasgow at the moment called Twilight Sad who I keep talking about because they're great. They sound nothing like what I do. They're really loud. They're more like Mogwai than what I do, but they're fantastic.

Oh, wow. I'll have to check them out. Okay...so the next song you're going to play?

"Paper & Glue" and it's the next single and there's been a video made for it.

I saw the video...

You did?! Where'd you see it?

I think it was on your website. Is it up on your website? It's you and the little glass...

Oh. Is it on the website? Already?

Yep. It's there!

I sent him an email to put it up. Wow - it worked!

It was really cute. I love the scene where you're in the glass box and you're feeding the birds. That was pretty classic.

It was hilarious doing that video. Honestly, it was quite embarrassing because it was shot in Glasgow and it's a New York director called Moh Azima who directed it. He came over to Glasgow because he knows a lot of crew in Glasgow. He thought he would like to do it there and it suited me, obviously, so he got these perspex boxes made up because basically the whole point of the video is the whole detachment that a person goes through after a break-up with somebody. He had me all kited out in five or six different outfits, my favorite one of which was the one feeding the birds.

I love that scene.

Yeah, because I really love the coats. I couldn't keep them though.

And just your expression.

Yeah, I know. It was really funny, but all of those set pieces were inspired a wee bit by the guy that does Royal Tenenbaums...

Wes Anderson?

Yes. It was kind of inspired by that kind of direction where it's just like these set pieces. I remember Moh saying at the time, "just think Royal Tenenbaums!" and I was just like, "okay!" I was completely deadpan.

It worked!

Yeah.Excellent. I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed making the video but it was also one of the most painful and embarrassing things I've ever done because I kept meeting people that I knew and they were like, "what are you doing standing in the middle of Kelvingrove Park in a box?" with cameras all around me and extras and everything. It was...honestly, things like that just make you think, "whoa, why did I get into this?"

Well, it's a great video. I really like it.

Well I'm glad you like it.

So where can we see you next? Tonight at the Echo...and then you're going to take a break for a little bit?

Four or five days.

Four or five days, you're going back home, and then?

We're going back home and then we're going to be playing in Paris and the Crossing Border Festival in the Hague and then we come back home to Britain and I do a U.K. tour with the band.

Great! Well thank you for stopping by.

No, thank you very much for having me!

And, again, we're going to hear "Paper & Glue." This is LiveDaily Sessions and Emma Pollock.