Freya Ridings about her famous dad, childhood shyness and more

A few minutes chatting to Freya Ridings and Hot Press is already star-struck. Not over Ridings herself - though she has an astonishing voice and seems sure to follow her teenage idol, Florence Welch, to the dizzying upper echelons of the charts. It's because she's just let slip that she has a famous family member.

"My dad is an actor. He does a lot of voiceover work nowadays. Have you heard of Peppa Pig? He's the voice of Daddy Pig." It's at this point that, as the father of three, I fall backwards, smoke streaming from both ears. "Fun fact of the day," she laughs, noting the response. "I had no idea it had got to be so huge."

I tell that her in our house Peppa Pig has long had iconic status - her father (Richard Ridings to give him his actual name) may as well have a cabinet full of Oscars, a Knighthood and an All-Ireland winning medal to his name. "It's so funny," laughs the 24-year-old. "My friends don't care."

Ridings may herself be on the track to Daddy Pig-scale stardom. She recently impressed Dublin audiences opening for Ray LaMontagne at BGE Theatre, and returns to play the city during her October tour. It's quite an ascent for singer from the quiet North London suburb of Parsons Green.

"I started writing when I was 10," she says. "And started playing live at 12. It's been a long old road. I went to every open mic night in North London." She is softly spoken and you wonder if it was an ordeal to step in front of strangers every night - strangers who had not paid to hear her sing - and emote her lungs out.

"I was a very very shy child," she says. "But I felt confident singing songs I had written in private. It was one of those lightning bulb moments when you realise what you wanted to do. In many other areas, and academically, I was cripplingly shy - in plays and things like that."

There's no getting around the fact that Ridings is quite posh - she speaks in the same chattering class tones as the aforementioned Florence and the singer Birdy, another artist with whom she has a lot in common (they're not soundalikes but if you like Birdy you'll appreciate Ridings' music too).
"I had a poster of Florence on one wall and Beyonce on the other," she says of her childhood. "My mother used to play a lot of Carole King. My dad was into really strong and honest songwriters."

Ridings is currently working on her first official LP. She's already released two live albums. However, studio work is a very different experience, she acknowledges.
"It's an entirely new thing. You play hundreds of gigs and all that practice stands to you. Then you go into the studio and you want to make sure that the recordings strike as strong a connection as possible. I'm lucky to work with some fantastic A&Rs who are really useful in terms of the co-writers and producers they put me with."

She certainly puts a lot of herself into her material. Her cover of Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs breathes new life into a familiar song; original composition such as Lost Without You and Black Out proceed from a lullaby whisper to a mighty shriek.

"Personal experience plays a huge part in my songwriting," she says. "It's an emotional furnace. Every artist has one story that they write about over and over again. The challenge is pushing yourself to tell different stories and see how far you can go."

Freya Ridings plays the Tivoli, Dublin on October 24.