Three decades after The Fall played their legendary gig at Clitheroe Castle’s bandstand, Brix Smith, who had two spells in the band returns to Clitheroe with Brix and the Extricated.

Her band features ex-members of The Fall, including bassist Steve Hanley. Before her gig at the Grand on Saturday, November 16, Tony Dewhurst had a chat with her

Brix, it is two years since Mark E Smith, your husband and former bandmate, died.

The shock of him leaving the planet left a big, empty hole in my life.

I did struggle. For three months I don’t think I went out.

But I look back with gratitude as I was part of one of the greatest bands in the world.

I also feel honoured to have worked with, and been a partner with, somebody so incredibly talented and free-thinking – off the scale of what people understand free-thinking is.

He came at everything from odd angles, outside every box. He shook up the snow globe every day of his life.

But, as with many creative people, Mark was a very volatile human being. He was a dark and complicated man, but a gentleman too, and he lived his life how he wanted to live.

A defining characteristic of Mark is that he was a self-saboteur.

The Fall’s music is powerful, grinding, ugly, poetic, hypnotic, beautiful, intellectual, multidimensional music.

It was a long time ago, but I do remember Clitheroe. It was quite a bizarre day, and feels like a weird, warped dream now.

The psychedelic power pop of your new album Super Blood Wolf Moon has been hailed as one of the albums of the year.

I’m so proud of it. It is a mystical, energetic record for these very unsettling times

It is also a dark piece of work, reflecting, I hope, the parlous state of our world.

People love to put your music in a genre, surround it in scaffolding and say you are this and that, but you just have to trust your instinct.

Wasteland (song from album) is about the catastrophe of climate change, the damage we are doing to our precious planet. And Crash Landing tackles the tough subject of euthanasia.

I’ve never spoken about this, but my little brother is dying of Multiple Sclerosis. He is crippled, blind, trapped in his own body, so the lyrics were incredibly difficult for me to write as he is somebody I love deeply.

His condition and options in his life, because of a devastating illness, will resonate with many people.

Wolves is about losing one of your pack, not just Mark’s death, but the many people who have coloured my life and passed on.

I live my live in the moment and I do what feels good to me. Life is not all Devon cream and beautiful sun-dappled rainbows.

I follow my heart and my instinct from moment to moment.

You’ve had to battle through two nervous breakdowns and the loss of your husband.

Sometimes the spirit of creation emerges from darkness.

It’s been well documented that Mark would do things like come on stage after we’d sound-checked for an hour, got it perfect, and then twist the knob on the amplifiers and mess everything up. It drove us bonkers.

But he was creating chaos and energy and you’d have to work that much harder to get everything back.

It made us better musicians and able to cope in all kinds of circumstances.

When you work harder at something, it makes it more intense and more powerful.

I had to deal with a lot of darkness through my depression and then break out of that negative thought process.

Many people wrote to me when I made my struggles public to say that they battle depression too.

You have to concentrate on what gives you joy in life; maybe eating your favourite food, stroking a cat, walking in the hills, reading a great book or listening to brilliant music.

Brix and the Extricated, Clitheroe Grand, Saturday, November 16. Details from 01200 421599 or www.thegrandvenue.co.uk