MARK Harrison is an artist who is putting a modern twist on a traditional form of music.

He is gaining a growing reputation for his folky-blues, including a sell-out show at the prestigious Celtic Connections festival. And next week he’ll be performing an intimate show at Barnoldswick Music and Arts Centre.

But it could have all been so different. For after making music for a number of years Mark stopped playing altogether.

“I think mostly because I did adult life instead,” he said, “and I tried to do that as well as I possibly could.

“Perhaps at the time it was an era when there wasn’t much around that I liked musically so I sort of wandered off I suppose and then I got that guitar, picked it up and found my thing pretty instantly.”

That guitar is a 1934 National Resonator which had formerly been owned by blues star Eric Bibb which has acted as Mark’s unofficial muse ever since.

“I’ had started listening to a lot of the old blues musicians again and gathering collections and reading about them,” he said. “I also learned about how they would tune a guitar. Once I whacked it into their open tunings I found out that I could play way beyond anything I thought I could do.

“It was the strange experience being way better than you thought you were. “

Although Mark’s music has its roots in early blues his own songs are very much of today - as showcased on his most recent album Turpentine.

“When I started although I liked the music and the atmosphere of the old blues musicians, I didn’t want to go and do their stuff.

“I couldn’t understand why there was so little original blues music, why blues music was the only kind of popular music that appeared to be frozen in time and no one appeared to want to innovate with.

“It seemed like blues was something no-one wanted to fiddle with. I just though why can’t you write a blues song around any topic and so I did.”

Armed with his trusty guitar and with a new approach to music Mark hasn’t looked back. His dry sense of humour has come to the fore and his shows often will see him talking about the origins of his songs - but he won’t be telling jokes!

I didn’t want to do that thing of singing a song and then telling a joke,” he said. “You will see it in the folk world sometimes when you get a deeply emotional song followed by a Ken Dodd gag - I just don’t like that.

“Because my songs are about something there was then something I could say to introduce them and the whole business of telling stories developed.”

Mark Harrison, Barnoldswick Music and Arts Centre, Saturday, April 8. Details from 01282 813374 or barnoldswickmusic andartscentre.com