Back in 2010 I had the pleasure of hearing Beth Nielsen Chapman for the first time and ultimately witnessed a live performance.

Much of Beth Nielsen Chapman’s new album is about love. It’s called BACK TO LOVE and six of the song titles feature the word “love” or “loving”, so it’s fitting that her upcoming tour starts on Valentine’s Day. It’s a fantastic collection and is rightly being hailed from all quarters as one of her best.Beth has quite a track record. She has written hit songs for the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Bette Midler, Elton John, Neil Diamond, Trisha Yearwood, Martina McBride, Michael McDonald, Roberta Flack and Willie Nelson. The hit single ‘This Kiss’, recorded by Faith Hill, even received a Grammy nomination.

BACK TO LOVE is a particularly special and life affirming record because the singer’s work on the album was rudely interrupted when she was told she had a brain tumour.

“I was trying to finish some of the lyrics for the record but I was just stuck and I couldn’t understand what was going on,” she says. “There was something funny happening with my ears and they wanted to do a scan, then they saw the scan and said ‘You have another problem that you may want to look at first.’ “So we scheduled the surgery and it was really daunting , but when I got through it it was such a relief that it all went okay. And then all of a sudden my lyrics started coming back to me.”

She says some of the songs were finished in no time once she underwent the operation.

“Even ‘As It All Goes By’ really developed over a long period of time. I wrote that with Annie Roboff and I actually started on it in 2004. So I’d work on it here and there and it still wasn’t finished last spring, but as soon as I woke up from the surgery I was like ‘Get me a pencil!’”

Beth was speaking to Weekend during rehearsals for her Celtic Connections gig at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow, which took place on Monday - the same day that Back To Love was released. She plays Belfast this Wednesday, before her tour officially kicks off in St Albans on February 14. She says choosing to start the tour on Valentine’s Day was intentional.

“Oh yeah, that was definitely done on purpose. I have a theme!”

The final track on BACK TO LOVE is ‘The Path To Love’ , another standout tune, and it has a definite Irish traditional sound to it.

“It does, yeah. My grandfather on my mother’s side was from Co Cork, so when I go to Ireland I just feel connected right away. And I just love Irish music and I think it’s in my bones.”

While the Belfast concert is the only Irish date on Beth’s current tour, she plans to return to play more dates in the autumn. She’ll be joined on stage in Belfast by Maartin Allcock, who has played with Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull, and Marcus Hummon.

“Eilidh Patterson will be opening for me and singing some harmonies. It’ll be great. And Ben Glover will probably get roped in to play on something as well!”

Does she plan to see old friend and fellow singer-songwriter Kieran Goss on her visit to Belfast?

“I do. And if I don’t see him I’m going to have to go hunt him down! One of the first times I met Kieran he drove me from Dublin to the Cliffs of Moher, so I was quite spoiled. He’s a good tour guide!”

Beth says she often leaves working out her set-list until the last minute, although she was under a bit more pressure for Monday’s Glasgow gig.

“I always wait until the last 15 minutes before I go on. And then I never follow it anyway. But I’m going to have a string quartet [in Glasgow] so I’m going to have to behave myself!  In Belfast I’ll probably do the whole record and throw in a bunch of old favourites. I love playing the new songs. A couple of them will be different to how they sound on the record, but we have a lot of fun with them. I’ll probably do one song from Prism and I usually do Emily, so it’ll be a real mix of stuff.”

Beth says she can write songs on either piano or guitar and for BACK TO LOVE she collaborated with Michael McDonald (Doobie Brothers), Darrell Tench (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers) and her close friend Annie Roboff.

“Terry was one of the original supporters, definitely. I’m supposed to do his new show soon, so I’m excited about that,” she says.

She says she has been living in Nashville - dubbed ‘Music City USA’ - since 1985. So is she planning to have a party to mark her 25 years in the city? “I should do. But maybe I’ll wait for 30!”

While she does have a platinum album to her name, 1994s criminally underrated SAND AND WATER, her main career successes have come from writing songs for other people, including Emmylou Harris, Bette Midler, Elton John, Willie Nelson and a host of others.

For example, Faith Hill’s chart-topping pop-country crossover ‘This Kiss’ was written by Chapman, alongside hundreds of others she’s composed over the past three decades.