Boston-based Vance Gilbert is one of the warmest, most infectiously entertaining singer-songwriters performing in America today. His keenly crafted, hard-hitting lyrics and catchy melodies are beautifully showcased by his supple guitar playing and rich, gentle tenor vocals. He is also an absolute live wire on stage: maniacally entertaining, Vance is that rare artist for whom people actually lean forward as eagerly in their seats between songs as they do during them.

Vance does not duck hard truths and never succumbs to the temptation to wrap his points up into neat platitudes, whether he's directing his compassionate gaze toward single parents, the tug between love's desires and its demands, or the bitterness of being marginalized by a Eurocentric culture.

Tonight's performance spotlights selections from Vance's new CD, Up on Rockfield, an album of which he says: "The concept of the tunes being written as if someone else was writing them is a real hit. I'll leave it to you to figure what tunes sound like which artists."