Paris, Texas might seem like a more natural source of inspiration than Paris, France for the strummed-guitar sound of Tift Merritt's latest record, Another Country. But to suggest this to the singer-songwriter, who made her Scottish debut at an intimate Tron theatre gig six years ago, is to discover why France held such an attraction.

Merritt became big news, back home in the US at least, when her second record, Tambourine, was nominated for a Best Country Album Grammy in 2004. It also put her in a handy category as far as the music industry was concerned, and Merritt isn't the type to be pigeon-holed.

"I'd already had marketing people telling me that I was too country for rock music and then too rock for country music, so they didn't know where my records should get filed in the stores or what radio stations they should target," she says. "And I thought, I don't want to be one or the other. I want to be both, and more. I also hadn't woken up in the same city for two weeks in at least a year. So I took myself off to a flat in Paris, away from everything."

Back in her school days in Raleigh, North Carolina, Merritt had gone on a student exchange to the French capital, so she knew the city, a bit, and the language, a bit, and although she hardly knew anyone who lived there, she felt she'd be okay to go alone. She felt so okay when she got there and the songs started coming to her so easily on her landlady's piano, that she stayed for two and a half months.

"It is ironic in a way because I get referred to as a country musician and, right at the time I was over there, the people in country music's heartlands were talking about freedom fries' instead of French fries," she says. "But I found quite a similarity between France and North Carolina.

The people in both places have very distinct manners and very distinct ways of doing things, so I fitted in. Paris is also a really inspiring place to be. It's a great place for artists, poets, musicians and writers."

Writing novels, rather than songs, was what Merritt originally planned to do in college. She took the creative writing course at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, but soon found that she could express herself better in lyrics and music. Growing up in Raleigh - the family had moved there from Houston, Texas, when she was two - she'd been shown the rudiments of guitar and piano by her dad, who'd played folk music as a young man and encouraged Tift to sing harmony with him at the piano.

"My mum had ambitions for me, she was always telling me that I had something to say and that I should find a way of saying it, but my dad, well, although he loved music, he was terrified of me becoming a musician," she says. "So to be able to phone him and say, I've been nominated for a Grammy' was probably one of the biggest things in my life."

It was one of her tutors at Chapel Hill who set Merritt properly on the path to songwriting, Bland Simpson, of bluegrass veterans the Red Clay Ramblers. An author and playwright as well as musician and songwriter, Simpson encouraged Merritt to follow her heroes, Emmylou Harris and Joni Mitchell, but counselled that, if she wanted to be a songwriter, she had to write a lot of different kinds of songs. So she took this advice as an exercise and even now, she says, she'll use it: as well as its very American-sounding songs, Another Country boasts a final track straight out of the French chanson tradition, Mille Tendresses.

Writing songs was one thing, getting up in front of an audience was another. "I felt the stuff I was coming up with was okay and maybe I could become a behind-the-scenes songwriter," she says. "But at first I just didn't think that anyone would want to come along to her me sing."

She made her first tentative steps in coffee houses and restaurants around the college campus and began to find that, actually, she quite liked being the centre of attention. The energy that she projects now was apparent early on and with a voice that reflected influences including Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin, Tom Waits and Johnny Cash as well as Emmylou Harris, she started to establish herself beyond her home state. Her first big break came as support to Ryan Adams, who recommended Merritt to his manager. He in turn became an executive with Lost Highway Records and signed Merritt to the Nashville-based company.

Merritt released her first album, Bramble Rose, in 2002, although it was another event that year that made her feel that she'd really arrived. Back home in Raleigh to support Emmylou Harris, the local girl made good got her parents front row seats and knew that all her friends would be there.

"Everyone knew that Emmylou was my hero and there she was, standing on stage to introduce me," says Merritt. "So I'm already feeling pretty good when I start singing my first song and suddenly there's another voice in the monitors, and I'm thinking, Emmylou Harris is singing harmony with me on my song. I felt confusion, shock, awe and ecstasy all at once. Afterwards, my mum said, right, you get nothing for Christmas this year - you just got everything you've ever wanted right there."

Back on that first Scottish visit, Merritt was travelling light, with just an accompanying pedal steel guitarist-cum-pianist for company. She's since been back with a full band, reflecting the bigger production values and the need for more powerful projection in the songs from Tambourine. On the initial dates to promote Another Country, including her Edinburgh concert this weekend, she's back on her lonesome.

"I like working both ways," she says, "because I think it makes you a better musician. It's like the difference between having one friend or the whole family over to dinner. Maybe playing solo you connect more intimately but I also like to jump around in front of a band. Either way, I want the audience to go through the range of emotions with me, from sadness to joy and everything in between, and give them something genuinely intense so they feel they've been part of something special."