Taking music on the road isn’t new for singer-songwriter Sarah McQuaid. As a child growing up in Chicago, she was a member of the Chicago Children’s Choir for six years and regularly went on 1o-day concert tours throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Today, McQuaid holds dual American and Irish citizenship, and lives in Cornwall, England. Her desire to perform hasn’t ebbed at all over the years, and she is currently touring the U.S. with a Nov. 19 stop at the Monroeville Public Library.

Her most recent album, a collection of live songs recorded in Rapid City, S.D., features her strident alto vocals and delicate guitar work.

McQuaid recently spoke with TribLive about her music. This interview has been edited for length.

Q: What is your songwriting process like? Does it vary from tune to tune?

A: It varies like crazy from song to song. Sometimes the words come first, sometimes the melody comes first, sometimes a guitar riff or piano part comes first. Sometimes the song emerges pretty much fully formed from the moment the idea occurs to me, and I sit down with an idea and get up an hour or so later with a finished song; sometimes it takes as many as three or four years to get from the initial idea to the finished song.

Q: What have you discovered about the songwriting process from living in the UK and talking with singer-songwriters there over the years?

A: I owe a huge debt of gratitude to an amazing woman called Zoë, whom I met when I first moved to Cornwall in 2007 and our kids were attending the same tiny primary school. It was only after I’d become friends with Zoë that I discovered she was a former pop star — she’d had a massive hit single back in 1991, “Sunshine On A Rainy Day,” which stayed in the Top Five of the UK pop chart for 16 weeks and made her a household name over there. She and I started writing songs together and made an album of co-written songs under the band name Mama. Prior to working with Zoë I thought of myself as a folk singer who happened to write occasional songs — I had just one original song on my first album, two on the second album, but all the albums I made after meeting Zoë consisted mostly of original material. She taught me so much about songwriting — before meeting her I always wrote songs with a basic verse-verse-chorus-middle 8 structure, but Zoë opened my eyes to the fact that a song can have pretty much any structure, as long as there’s a structure of some sort. She freed up my mind in terms of song inspiration — for example, “Aquí Me Pinté Yo” started with just two words, “red, yellow” — and just those two words put me in mind of a painting I’d seen by the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, which is what the song eventually came to be about — but I wouldn’t have thought of the painting if Zoë hadn’t sung me those two words!

Q: What do you look for in a good cover song?

A: I’ve been in the habit of recording at least one cover song on each of my albums — I’ve recorded covers in the past of “Ode To Billie Joe,” “Solid Air,” “Forever Autumn,” “Autumn Leaves,” and I’ve already decided that my next album will include a cover of Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees,” which I’m playing in my current concert set. I think it’s a good exercise, as a songwriter, to try and get my head into another songwriter’s head from time to time, and to see what I can bring to their song to make it my own in some way, while at the same time staying true to the spirit of the original. I also find that cover songs are a good way of making my music more accessible to audiences — when they hear me perform a song they already know and love, I get the feeling that it makes them readier to listen to my own originals.

Q: Does the album you’re currently working on have a particular theme or idea behind the songs?

A: Well, one of the new songs I’ve written for it is called “I’m Slowing Down As I Get Older (And That’s Good)” and I suspect that might just become the title track of the new album — there’s a video of it on my YouTube channel, along with a video of me performing the above-mentioned cover of “Fake Plastic Trees”! I guess most of the new songs I’ve been writing are reflections on the human condition, on the things that are common to all of our lives. I hope that doesn’t sound too vague!

Q: What is your favorite of the new songs you’re working on, and why?

A: Oh gosh, I like them all! There’s one that’s still taking shape that I’m calling “Settle Down” and am particularly excited about — it’s a song about how every concert involves a kind of contract between the performer and the audience, and the performer needs the audience just as much as the audience needs the performer — we all commit to spend an hour or two sharing the space in which the music is made, experiencing it together. It’s still very much embryonic, and I probably won’t get a chance to develop it further until I get home from this tour — but I know that every show I do between now and the end of the tour will help to contribute to its development, so I’m willing to wait!

McQuaid will perform at 7 p.m. Nov. 19 at the library, 4000 Gateway Campus Boulevard. There is no cost to attend. For more, see SarahMcQuaid.com or MonroevilleLibrary.org.

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