Ruth Eliza with Matthew Ord and Tom Kimber

Ruth Eliza plays The Coach House on Friday 14 August, with guitarist Matthew Ord and mandolinist Tom Kimber. It's a stop on the launch tour for her debut solo album, While The Light Shines, which came out in March this year.

Eliza is a Lancaster-based clawhammer banjo player and singer-songwriter, and the tour is built around the new record. She describes her sound as drawing on a love of old-time Appalachian folk music and contemporary Bluegrass and Americana to create what she calls a fresh take on Anglo-Folk-Americana: open, honest and raw yet well-arranged songs delivered through her distinctive banjo style. That clawhammer technique is right at the front of it — a rhythmic, down-picking style that gives the banjo a percussive, driving feel rather than the fast, rolling lines you might expect from bluegrass.

She's not on her own for the night. Matthew Ord, a London-based singer and guitarist, rounds out the trio with a repertoire that stretches across Delta and Piedmont blues, Scots and English ballads, jigs, reels and protest songs. With Tom Kimber on mandolin, the set pulls from a few different traditions at once — the Appalachian roots Eliza works from, the blues and ballads Ord brings, and the mandolin sitting across the middle of it all.

It starts at 7:00pm at The Coach House, 22 Walpole Road in Kemp Town, and tickets are £14.90 including the booking fee.