JULIA: wowOwow welcomes Judith Owen, my sometimes New Orleans neighbor and a phenomenally talented singer/songwriter whose latest album is "Mopping Up Karma" Judith is in New York because she just performed three shows with fellow singer/songwriter Shawn Colvin and she has a solo show at the Blue Note on Monday, September 28, which I highly recommend. The New York Times recently called her the Welsh answer to Annie Lennox and an heir to Joni Mitchell. How are you, Judith?

JUDITH: So much better for hearing that again! That’s the kind of thing you just dream of hearing in your lifetime.

JULIA: I think Stephen Holden, the Times critic who wrote that, has a really big crush on you.

JUDITH: Oh, he’s just got the darkness like me. We share that, and he’s been such a supporter of mine for some years now.

JULIA: The darkness you refer to is the depression you’ve struggled with all your life. In his Times piece Holden wrote that your albums – and I’m quoting here – "chart a journey from darkness to light." Is that a fair description?

JUDITH: I think it’s an absolutely perfect description. You could listen to any one of my CDs and you would actually know where I was in my mental health journey. The funny thing is I’ve always just wanted to be in the light. I’ve always wanted to be well, and it’s always been something I’ve had to strive for because I’ve been ill since I was a little girl. My mother was terribly ill with depression, and she lost to the disease. There’s nothing like seeing somebody being really beaten down and killed by something to make you want to absolutely do your damnedest to be all right.

JULIA: Well, that’s incredibly brave, because so many people don’t have that reaction. How old were you when your mother succumbed to suicide?

JUDITH: I was 15 going on 16.

JULIA: Wow. Horrible year.

JUDITH: The thing about being around depressed people, especially when you have depression as well, is that it kind of becomes the norm. It’s the devil, you know? And I did swing the way everybody swings after something like that, and I thought I deserved to die, and I thought I deserved to have a terrible life, and I thought I deserved to be with bad men. But there’s another part of me … I always wanted to know what it felt like to be in the moment and to not have voices going on in my head, and to not be constantly filled with self-loathing, and to be paralyzed with this fear and anxiety. And having seen my mother deteriorate, especially at the end, so rapidly, I just felt that I would do anything – anything it would take – to not end up that way. I was just lucky … there’s nothing like seeing a life lesson that strongly in front of you.

JULIA: You’ve said that all through your struggles, music has been your form of self-medication. And now, not only has music helped you, you’re using it to help other people. You’re on your way to England in a couple weeks to perform at the Priory, which is a very well-known clinic. You and the comedienne Ruby Wax, who also suffers from depression, are going to do shows there. Tell us about that.