THERE’S a ghost sitting at Chris Wood’s shoulder. Not a particularly spooky one, but it’s certainly quite a demanding spectre. It sits there and listens to the folk musician as he sings a song, showing its appreciation in silent applause.

The apparition changes depending on which piece of music he is performing – because it’s the ghost of each person he learned it from.

“If you get it wrong, or you get a bit clever-clever with it, then you get a dig in the ribs,” explains Wood.

“But there again, if you sing it exactly the same way every night, then you hear the sound of ghostly snoring.”

Recently, the ghost hasn’t been putting in much of an appearance as Wood has been mainly working on his own material.

His method of giving modern subjects a traditional treatment won him the prestigious title of BBC Radio 2’s Folk Singer of the Year 2009.

The audience at his intimate gig in the Philharmonic Hall’s Rodewald Suite next week will be treated to his unique brand of storytelling.

“If it’s a strong story, the audience will do a lot of the work for you,” he says.

“If you work it right, you get an audience and they’re all sophisticated, switched on, avant garde people, but you start singing to them and they become reduced to the age of six again.

“It’s as if they’re sitting cross-legged on the school carpet listening to the teacher telling them a story.”

Wood was playing Simon & Garfunkel’s arrangement of Scarborough Fair at school when he was approached by a woman from the local folk club who invited him to perform there.

Years later, he would play with Martin Carthy, who first introduced Paul Simon to the traditional song.

“I like the immediacy of folk music,” reveals Wood, “the fact that you don’t need a big stage, smoke and mirrors, dancing girls, managers and tour buses. Somebody sits down in front of some people and plays them a song.

“I’ve been doing this a while now, but even so it comes as a beautiful surprise every gig when people respond.”

He is one of the musicians involved in The Imagined Village, a project started in 2004 to explore English musical roots, leading to the release of an album featuring Wood, Martin and Eliza Carthy, Benjamin Zephaniah and Sheila Chandra among others.

“I love the breadth that folk music allows,” Wood continues.

“It’s surprising these days what passes for folk music. You can wear your Aran sweater and put your finger in your ear or you can put together a full-on electro dubstep breakbeat band.

“We’re got two drummers in the Imagined Village and a bass player who plays with Mary J Blige.

“The drummers play with Massive Attack and yet this is still folk music.”

He laughs before continuing: “And soon enough I will be one of those ghosts – which is fine by me.”

CHRIS WOOD is playing at the Philharmonic Hall’s Rodewald Suite, on Friday, April 24.