PORT ANGELES — Ruth Moody, the Australian-born, Canadian-raised singer, is having a good run.
Last year, she did 12 shows with Mark Knopfler, the guitar master behind Dire Straits, including performances in France, Amsterdam and the Royal Albert Hall in London.
Now, Moody is back on her home continent, headed for Port Angeles and a concert Sunday night in the Peninsula College Little Theater.
Though known for her music with the trio the Wailin’ Jennys, Moody has her own band now and a new album called “These Wilder Things,” to be the centerpiece of her 7:30 p.m. show at the college, 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd. Tickets are $20 for this Juan de Fuca Foundation for the Arts concert, via www.JFFA.org.
Just what are “These Wilder Things”? In an interview from the Chicago stop on her U.S. tour, Moody said the songs on her fresh record have to do with growth and change — a progression from her 2010 album “The Garden.”
“Wilder” travels from the Celtic sound of “Life Is Long” and the bluegrass-tinged “One Light Shining” to Moody’s stripped-down cover of the Bruce Springsteen hit “Dancing in the Dark.” And Knopfler lends his guitar and voice to the dark “Pockets.”
He and Moody are members of a mutual admiration club, after she sang on his 2012 album “Privateering.” Moody is just as enthused about the band she’s traveling with these days: multi-instrumentalists Adam Dobres and Adrian Dolan and upright bassist Sam Howard.
“All the boys sing as well,” she added, so there are three- and four-part harmonies along with her own guitar-, accordion- and banjo-playing.
Moody’s ethereal voice is well-known to listeners of “A Prairie Home Companion,” which has featured the Wailin’ Jennys on more than a dozen occasions.
She’s a two-time Juno award winner from Winnipeg, Manitoba, a woman who went from a classical background to loving the banjo.
“It’s a complete instrument, with rhythm and melody,” Moody said. “It’s my favorite for singing.”
She finds too that the banjo is an excellent escort in her writing process. Moody’s songs muse about “love and loss and change
. . . and how I’m navigating this journey we’re on.
“Some of my songs are personal, but I think, I hope people can relate to them,” she said.
“When I write, it’s when I have something to figure out.”
