Piney Gir and friends play FINAL show at Oxford's Deaf & Hard of Hearing Centre

The singer-songwriter and indie-rocker is equally at home playing solo, with one of her various bands or – thrillingly – as a backing singer for Supergrass star Gaz Coombes and Oasis legend Noel Gallagher with her trio The Roxys.

Tomorrow (Friday), Piney and friends Fiona Bevan and Samantha Whates, play a night of music at Oxford’s Deaf and Hard of Hearing Institute. And it promises to be an historic event, with the venue set to close for good.

“I love any excuse to play Oxford as it’s my home from home,” says Piney, who these days lives in London.

“The venue is amazing but is closing down, so we are excited to play the last gig in this beautiful space.

“It’s gonna be magic. All the ingredients are there: music, fun, friendship, talent, and it’s in a lovely venue. Be a part of it and make some memories with us.”

Despite being from Kansas via London, Piney’s Oxford links are strong, with a long relationship with Steventon’s Truck Festival.

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“I first played Truck with my synth pop duo Vic Twenty in 2003,” she recalls. “We’d just come off tour supporting Erasure and had released a single on Mute. We promptly split up, amicably. Truck offered me a solo record deal and they paired me up with A Scholar and a Physician for my first album.

“We recorded in Truck Studios on lovely Hill Farm – sharing the studio with Goldrush (they worked all night, we worked all day, and they were messy boys, leaving empty beer cans and Pot Noodle everywhere).

I then released an album on Truck Records, Peakahokahoo in 2004, and The Piney Gir Country Roadshow album Hold Yer Horses came out on Truck shortly after.

“I have played Truck countless times, and had the honour of curating a stage one year, which was great fun! I had Let’s Wrestle, The Nuns and The Research play on my stage, they were great. I also curated a smaller stage that doubled as a craft tent. We created a massive quilt of squares sewn by festival-goers which was auctioned off on the main stage for charity. I also ran line-dancing lessons at Truck and got them all up on the main stage with me to do the dance during my encore. That was super cute!

“Then there was my side-project The Schla La Las, who also released an EP on Truck Records and played the festival many times. Oxford is definitely where I honed my musical chops and I will always feel love for the place. It kinda feels like where I grew up.”

And as for Fiona and Samantha? “We met through the music scene in London,” she says. “We hail from a similar DIY/indie background and play a lot of the same nights. We ended up being firm friends and did a whole UK tour together in November. If we could tour together all the time we would, we have such a great time!

“Fiona and Samantha are doing solo sets and they each have their own kind of magic they bring to the stage. We each will hop up and sing a bit on one another’s songs, and then I’m doing the headline slot because I’ve got my full band with me. I love a full band show.”

Piney will be joined by a bunch of long-term friends and bandmates – all familiar to Oxford gig-goers. They include Nick ‘Growler’ Fowler and Garo Nahoulakian (both formerly of Goldrush and latterly Gaz Coombe’s band) and Mike ‘Mickey Sticks’ Monaghan (Gaz Coombes, Willie J Healey, Little Fish, Ralfe Band and Saint Etienne).

“Playing with these guys is the most comfortable place on earth for me,” says Piney.

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“It’s my favourite thing to do. I love those boys like family, and they are the best musicians I know, we’ve been playing together for 10 years or more. We complete each other’s thoughts; it’s like having psychic friends connected by an invisible force. I can’t explain it really, it’s definitely supernatural.

“I’m so lucky to know those guys and honoured that they choose to play with me; there is so much love when we’re together.”

And the music? “I love all kinds of music, so I make all kinds of music,” she smiles. “My current (and seventh) album You Are Here, is inspired by angular art pop – think Bowie’s Berlin trilogy.

I used a piece of vintage gear called an Eventide on most of the album – on my voice, on synths, guitars and bass, it’s even on the sax solos, there is lashings of it everywhere! This is an effect discovered by Tony Visconti who said it “[messes] with the fabric of time” – to get the best from it we left a lot of spaces and spikes in the music, which gives this album a light airy quality, but the Eventide makes it feel expansive.

“There are some layers, reminiscent of Roxy Music, especially with the saxophones played by Tomas Greenhalf and Sweet Baboo – who also sings a duet with me on a song called Variety Show, which has lots of layered synths on it. It’s like if the Top Gun soundtrack married the Stranger Things soundtrack and had a baby!

“The newest single, Puppy Love, features vocals from Willie J Healey, another Oxfordshire darling who is doing so well at the moment. It’s so great to see his talent being celebrated.

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“There are also some dreamy, surreal moments of Twin Peaks on the album (the soundtrack to David Lynch’s 90s TV show). This might be because I used to live in the town just outside Seattle where Twin Peaks was filmed. I could actually hear Snoqualmie Falls from my bedroom window and would go past The Lodge every day on my way to school. I wasn’t allowed to watch Twin Peaks (I grew up sheltered from secular culture) but have discovered the show recently and I love how artful it is. And it’s filmed in a beautiful part of the world, nostalgic for me; it is conducive to the dream pop that it inspires.

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Piney’s fame has spread recently with her backing vocal duties for Coombes and Gallagher with The Roxys, alongside friends Emma Brammer and Amy Ashworth. And the story behind the name is a tale to behold, she explains: “The name The Roxys came about when Gaz was asked to perform on Later: Jools Holland, which was a bit of a dream for us,” she says. “One of his songs, Deep Pockets, requires a bit of sleigh bell action from us girls. After the show Nile Rodgers, who was also playing on the show, came up to us and pointed to each of us one at a time saying ‘Roxy, Roxy and Roxy music, who knew sleigh bells could be so sexy?’ and he gave us a big grin. We were so shy, I think all we did was giggle, but the name Roxys stuck and we are still called Roxys today!”

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That was only one of many proud moments – which also include recording her album Geronimo! in Los Angeles at the house of Rob Campanella from The Brian Jonestown Massacre, performing in West Virginia with Will Oldham and Calexico for America’s National Public Radio, and playing the Park Stage at Glastonbury right after Pete Doherty.

She recalls: “Kate Moss was at the side of the stage watching our set and a naked man joined us on stage hopping around wearing nothing but a bunny head. Ed Harcourt also came on stage and started misbehaving. It was total mayhem, but it felt like a proper rock & roll circus.

“Honestly, it was kinda hard to keep it together, but we did... and we nailed it!”

It's all a change of pace from the days she enchanted us with her folksy Country Roadshow - though she still has a soft spot for the music of her birthplace... even though she initially hated it!

"I think being from Kansas the Roadshow is something that had to happen," she says.

"When I lived in Kansas City, I thought country music wasn’t ‘cool’ because it was in every gas station and grocery store and to me it seemed like ‘old people music’ probably because Grandpa listened to it all the time.

"I loved synth pop, Depeche Mode, Erasure, and gothier stuff like The Cure. The familiar twang of country was like a repellent for me. I guess that’s how I came to first do a synth pop album.

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"But when I was asked to play a gig at a working man’s club in London I thought it would be a laugh to get some friends together and do country covers of my first album. This went down so well that we immediately got gig offers and festival offers and people wanted to buy recordings of it straight away. We thought, maybe there’s something to this country lark. I also realised I was a bit homesick and country music soothed that.

"I then discovered a lot of ‘cool’ country that really spoke to me like, Bonnie Prince Billy, my obsession with Dolly Parton heightened, The Handsome Family, The Guthries, Gram Parsons, Jason Ringenberg, and I grew to appreciate the classic country I grew up hearing, like Pasty Cline, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams.

"Then I kinda had this ‘no place like home’ feeling when I wrote, sang, performed country music, it became really comfortable for me.

"I did a full 180 on it after rebelling against it, I embraced it, and I still love it!"

• Piney Gir and friends play the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Centre, Oxford, tomorrow. Piney’s acclaimed album You Are Here is out now