When I meet up with Susan O'Neill in Dublin, she’s just out of a three-hour car ride from Clare – looking fresh as ever, though, her signature warm smile stuck on her face and hands wrapped around a hot cup of tea. Just a few days ago, she was playing the Theatre Royal in Waterford, a venue she has performed in many times over the years, “but never on my own,” she tells me.

“The Theatre Royal is two or three storeys high,” says the singer. “You're in the presence of the ghosts inside the stones of these walls that are hundreds of years old, and you really want to fill that space with something that's worthwhile.”

Susan ONeill. Copyright Abigail Ring/ hotpress.com

An energy she’s also bringing to her highly anticipated headline show in Vicar Street on May 15: “I just keep thinking about how am I going to work with the room. I'm always thinking about the place and how to fill it with stories and sound.”

Any nervousness?

“I think after a certain point, it's not nerves anymore, it's butterflies,” reflects O’Neill. “I love tapping into those – the butterflies mean this really matters to me. And with the right amount of them, I think it makes you give a little bit more.”

O’Neill has been in the game for over seven years – during which time, she’s put out three albums and one EP, and opened for heavyweights such as Phoebe Bridgers and The Teskey Brothers. She’s also a three-time winner of Best Original Folk Track at the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards, in addition to being nominated for a Choice Music Prize.

As she explains, her songwriting grew out of journaling when she was very young.

“Some of the songs on the first album were actually diary entries that I took, maybe five or six years later, and just rejigged them a little bit,” says Susan. “I always advocate for journaling. It’ll come back as this self-reflective thing, something you can use or mirror.”

Susan ONeill. Copyright Abigail Ring/ hotpress.com

The most recent project before the release of her latest album, 2024’s Now In A Minute, was the widely acclaimed album with Mick Flannery, In The Game. Although collaborating on a full LP might seem like a hugely ambitious project, O’Neill clarifies that such an environment is where she most thrives.

“My heart really is in sharing sound, because for me, that's when it's playful,” she says. “Other people will often bring a song somewhere that I didn't necessarily know it could go. I think that's a really powerful thing. And then letting go of it enough that then you can say, ‘There’s something that came out of my head, go play with it and see what you do.’

“Whenever I finish a song on my own, I go, ‘Right, there we go now, that's done.’ I guess it's like putting on a nice outfit when I'm on my own. I’ll leave the house and I’ll think, ‘Okay, cool.’ But if you're with your friends and you're all getting ready together, there's glee and joy buzz about it.”

Every collaboration, O’Neill insists, is a new chance to learn and make her own process richer.

“The next time you go to sit down and write a song, you're going to use some of those tools you got from other people,” she notes. “At heart, it’s a toolbox of writing, isn't it? It's widening your approach.”

One word that comes to mind when listening to O’Neill’s most recent album is ‘naturalistic’ – organic, like it’s lined with memories of the outside world and its landscape.

Susan ONeill. Copyright Abigail Ring/ hotpress.com

“I really do feel that everything we see, everything we take on, is coming out of us one way or another,” the musician explains. “I think the quality of the air, the way the light is, the shadow of the leaves on the path – all of these things, we’re taking them in and they're informing our mood and our day. The land will always offer you something.”

I ask if being born in Clare, a county that is so well-known for its incredible
natural landscapes, plays a part in this outlook.

“There's a lot of stone – a lot of cracked stone, and the people in Clare are a bit wild and rugged, like the landscape,” reflects Susan. “And I think there's a healthy respect for the other, because in these places you just can't build. Even if you wanted to, your house would be rubble in a couple of years.

“There's a respect for your place in the world and that, okay, this is your garden, but you have to tend to it. And I think the same thing comes through the music – let the music do the talking.”

Another intriguing aspect of O’Neill’s output is the way she plays with non-traditional folk structures – she’s unafraid to experiment. When discussing her early inspirations, she quickly cites the modern composer Gerald Barry, who she studied for her Leaving Cert.

“There was this one piece where not one section was the same as the other, but he did go back to motifs that were similar,” says the singer. “Here he was: a celebrated composer and he broke every rule. I played it for the first time and I remember being completely shocked, bowled over. It did everything that art is supposed to do: it made me uncomfortable.

“It made me curious. It made me wildly confused. I remember thinking: ‘Okay, well, that just broke everything that I've been learning about Czajkowski – just threw all of that out of the window, did something else, and is equally celebrated.’ I think that when it comes to folk, we can do these things as well.”

“I don't do it for the sake of doing it, but if there's an opportunity to use something a little bit different, I suppose that the idea of doing something a little bit new or paving a new path for myself is interesting to me.”

Susan ONeill. Copyright Abigail Ring/ hotpress.com

Although the musician has been touring at an incredibly fast pace these past few years, she has also often said that she tends to sit with her songs for months or even years before she feels happy with them – how does she reconcile her own need to slow things down with the industry’s need for speed?

“I have found that both the release of music and the pace of gigs have been a huge moment for me to completely learn about and immerse myself in the things I had to discover about myself,” says Susan.“The fast-paced world of gigs – you have to pay close attention to what the body needs all the while, in terms of sleep and nutrients.

“All the basic stuff just has to be looked after. There's no rulebook to self-care and the lifestyle, because it's such a very unique thing. I mean, nobody else knows exactly how I do it.”

• Susan O’Neill will play Vicar Street on May 15.