Photo: Traci Goudie 

Intimacy clearly liberates Mindy Smith. When the New York native enters The Cactus Café—the cozy University of Texas listening room that launched Townes Van Zandt and Lucinda Williams—she is, finally, fiery and focused. In grander settings—specifically, 2004’s Austin City Limits festival and Rocky Mountain Folks Fest two years later—she seemed unavailable and uncomfortable, failing to spark more than passing interest. Even a maddeningly businesslike Kris Kristofferson dialed in more enthusiasm later that Folks Fest.

Talk about evolution. Smith commands this stage—jokes in pocket, an easy and frequent smile warming the grizzliest souls—with the unpolished appeal of a young Emmylou Harris. Humor rolls like a streamliner. “So, I live in Nashville,” she says between ascending postcard poems of youthful exploration (“Long Island Shores”) and adult contentment (“Tennessee”). “We call it ‘the other music city.’” Fact: Winking ingratiation rarely fails to win over a capital city crowd.

Graceful diffusion glosses that charm. Plagued with technical miscues, Smith attempts three new songs onstage for the first time, including “one of those ‘Oh, crap, it’s five o’clock and I should do some work’” tunes. Instead of excuses, she provides punch lines. “I’m not a great guitar player,” she admits after ham-fisting a chord progression. “Let’s be honest, I’m not gonna be Van Halen anytime soon.” True. She’s plenty accomplished with spot-on chops elevating “Little Devil” and “Come to Jesus,” which effortlessly segue into the devastating maternal rumination “One Moment More.”

Smith fortified her recent Christmas collection My Holiday—a truly rare seasonal achievement—with the same naked emotion. Shame the appropriate timeframe evaporated so rapidly. No matter. Her robust encore of Dolly Parton’s classic “Jolene” muffles that peripheral gripe, and the unbending denouement “Fighting for It All” silences it completely. In fact, the latter provides an exacting commentary on her development as a performer. “You can try to keep me down, you can try to keep me under,” she sings emphatically. “But you’ll never get my will, you’ll never take my will to fight.”

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