It seems strange for anyone who has seen her live, but Tipperary-born Gemma Hayes hasn't been playing for that long. To listen to her sweet, sweet voice in a live setting, it would be easy to imagine that the 22-year-old has been performing since she was knee-high to the proverbial grasshopper, but that is not the case.

While she had always played piano, Gemma only picked up a guitar when she uprooted to Dublin in her late teens. The move to the capital wasn't part of any great search for fame and fortune, though: she initially arrived in Dublin to attend college.

"That was out the window pretty quick," she laughs, "with the music, and also because I failed my Psychology exams. I did get the exams at the end of the summer but after a few weeks back in college I knew that that it wasn't for me."

Music soon took a front seat in her life and, like many a talented musician before her, it wasn't long before Gemma was a regular at the singer-songwriter nights in The International Bar.

"You need to do that," she insists. "It's great to vibe off other people. I think the songwriter thing in Dublin gets a bit of a slagging, but songwriters need an outlet. The fact that it is all songwriters, from the outside it looks like a big clique, but where else are they going to go?"

She still describes The International as "the scariest gig you can do. I've seen so many people with record deals get up there and they are shaking. It is just so intense, because you are surrounded by people who know you, there is no PA and it is so scary. That's why I don't do it any more," she smiles.

The singer-songwriter nights were soon followed by her first support slot in Whelan's, and it wasn't long before audiences were wondering exactly who was the pretty girl with the amazing voice on stage and where could they hear her again? One such punter was none other than Julian Lennon, who spotted Gemma playing in Dublin's DA Club and asked her to sing a duet with him on his album.

"When you're 19 and you think you're going to do nothing anyway, this is the most amazing thing ever," recalls Gemma, who gladly accepted the son of god's offer to sing with him.

Then, last year saw Gemma travelling to Texas as part of the Irish contingent at the South By Southwest showcase, along with The Frames and Nina Hynes, an experience which provided the young singer with a tale or two to tell her grandkids.

"I ended up on stage with Guy Clarke, Hal Ketchum and Jimmy Dale Gilmore, all these big country singers," she remembers. "We were all sitting on stage, swapping songs - Guy Clarke was singing backing vocals to one of my songs. It was just unbelievably brilliant!"

Since then, she has been "just trying to build up a bit of an audience". Judging by the packed house in Whelan's the last time she played there, she has already achieved that. Gemma has also been approached by certain management and record people over the last couple of years, but she felt she wasn't ready for it at the time.

"That probably sounds a little shitty but it was the case," she stresses. "I had a bunch of songs, but not enough to get myself in really deep water, and I still didn't have an idea what my sound was - I didn't want just to be a female voice and an acoustic guitar. I'm only now starting to get that sound - I have an idea where I want to go."

She has signed a publishing deal with Universal, though, which allowed her to leave the part-time job she held down in a launderette. It also allowed her to buy an eight-track recorder and an electric guitar and write some more songs.

Indeed, with the songs "spitting out" at a ferocious rate, and Gemma's live presence becoming more pronounced with every gig, it seems that it will not be long before she does sign that record deal.

"I want to make an album this year. I want to find my sound really quickly, because if you get involved with a record company and you don't know exactly what your sound is, they tend to push their ideas on you, and I don't want that. But it's a great place to be right now - it's very exciting. It's either now or never, 'cos I want to have babies too," she laughs. "There are so many other things I want to do with my life."

* Gemma Hayes plays a solo show at Whelan's on Tuesday, April 11th.