BBC Introducing

Singing and songwriting is something Lou Brown has wanted to do ever since she was a child, and now, she marks her first anniversary since deciding to take music seriously as a career. Life as a 'full time' singer isn't going too badly: she's got her second album due next year and has more gigs planned in the US.

Bournemouth-based Lou first started playing guitar when she was seven, and with musical parents, she thinks some sort of interest in music was almost inevitable.

She says: "Mum and dad both played guitar in the 1960s, and it was my mum's guitar I first started playing.

"But I just found I liked writing music and it went from there."

Lou in the South:Live studio

Nerves

Her first gig was when she was 14, in a folk club, and the nerves she felt then still return to her before the gigs she plays now, but, as she says: "Performing's the only thing I've wanted to do."

Following a series of gigs around Iowa earlier in 2008, Lou, who describes her musical style as 'folky pop', is planning to go back for more, as she found her time in the US to be an enjoyable experience.

Lou says: "It was, one, my first time touring, and, two, my first time in the States, but it went well. A lot of people knew the album too."

"But if I did it again I'd put in more days off. I don't think you realise how vast America is."

America

Many of the gigs Lou and her small band played had originated through Myspace.

Lou with Sally Taylor

"We'd get messages that would say, 'We've got a great acoustic scene here, why not come over and play?'.

"We played in some amazing venues, including a 'friendly family tattoo parlour' - it was the weirdest place in the middle of nowhere!"

Listen to a new live session of three tracks and an interview from BBC Radio Solent's South:Live programme, plus older tracks and interviews from previous BBC Radio Solent appearances.