 When singer-songwriter Norah Jones invited people to 'Come Away With Me' in 2002, millions of music lovers were only too happy to oblige. The album became one of the year's biggest sellers, and catapulted Jones into the industry's major league. Not bad going for a debut album. But could she follow it through with an equally successful follow-up - a so-called sophomore album? Feels Like Home was released in February and it has already gone double platinum in Britain. So the answer is clearly yes. "The Sophomore jinx - what am I going to do about it?" laughs Norah. "People either like it or not, and I'm not going to change anything. I can only make the best album that I can right now. "It's maybe not the best album in the world, but maybe people will like it. I tried to approach this in the same way as the first album. "I tried to pick some good songs and tried to get the best takes of them we could. "It's OK if people don't like it, because I like it. Maybe in a year I'll hate it, I don't know. But I'm happy with it and it was really fun to make." Fans of Norah's laid-back music no doubt relish Feels Like Home, but may have been surprised at the number of more uptempo tracks on the CD - tracks that will no doubt make up a large bulk of Tuesday's show at Newcastle City Hall, when Norah will make her North East debut. "For the past year or two we've been trying to add more uptempo songs in our live show, just because we don't want people to come to the show and fall asleep because it is a bunch of ballads," she says. "It was like a natural progression. It's not like we intentionally said, `we've got to get a fast song'. We've just been playing a lot more songs that are a little faster in the live shows. "I think we've moved in a different direction. We've been playing together for a long time. It feels good, it's cool." Recording of the album started a year ago, in upstate New York. "We spent about six days upstate recording and we got about 13 songs and then we went on tour in the summer. After that we re-recorded most of them and came up with different stuff on tour, although we kept three or four songs. "Recording can be really frustrating or really amazing. It can just be frustrating if you can't get a good take of something. "The best takes are the first or second, sometimes. When you have to labour over a song a little bit more, even if you get a good result in the end, it's still not as good sometimes as just a live first or second take. "The perfect example is Don't Know Why from the first album. That was not only the first that we recorded it was also the first take that we did. I didn't even know how I was going to phrase half of it. "That was the single, and that was the demo take. It's just always cooler that way." Norah may be a big name now, but an even bigger name guests on Feels Like Home. "We were just talking one night, saying it would be really good to get Dolly Parton come and sing on the record, ha-ha! It was a joke," recalls Norah. "And there's this song, Creeping In, which is a bluegrass kind of fun song. We'd been playing it a lot on tour in the summer as it's really fast, which we need in the middle of a set to build up to a climax. "We weren't going to put it on the record as we thought it was maybe a little bit too much in another direction and it might stick out like a sore thumb. But people really liked the song and we thought, `why don't we get Dolly to sing on it?'. "We thought all she could say is no, but she said yes. She sounds great on it. She sings her butt off. She just came in, did it, one take, except for a couple of lyrics she forgot. "We were so nervous, because we really wanted to play the track, we didn't want her to just come in and over-dub. "We were nervous that we would do good for her, because we only had an hour. But we did it, and it worked out." NNorah Jones is at Newcastle City Hall on Tuesday. The show is a sell-out. For returns, ring (0191) 261 2606. | 
