Vicky Pratt Keating, veteran of the Washington, D.C. folkie scene -- the same one that sprang Emmylou Harris on an unsuspecting world -- has long been an underappreciated gem. While Ms. Harris got her start mixing it up with country rockers such as Gram Parsons, Ms. Keating has staked out her turf in the currently popular realm of Literate Female Folkies. She writes songs about her personal experience, ruminates on the rain forest and even dedicated a song to Sylvia Plath.

All of which gets her a lot of comparisons to artists such as Mary-Chapin Carpenter and Nanci Griffith. This is sort of lazy, but understandable -- her talent is equivalent. Her lyrics are thoughtful, but not belabored. When on "Buffalo" -- a cut from her self-produced CD, Blue Apples -- she meditates on the white man's coming to the new world, it's with a certain measure of acceptance, and without rancor or pedantry. "Boy With a Kite" is a wonderful tune about unrequited love, and the music-box lilt of "Oh Peter" propels words that are a viscerally affecting mix of separation, sadness and self-assurance.

Ms. Keating sings in an airy soprano that might be considered tentative or girlish if it weren't deployed with such assurance. As it is, her voice recalls for us the uncertainty and doubt that so often accompanies life and love. There's also a rural, almost reedy undertone to her singing, very much like Dolly Parton, that reminds the listener that the D.C./Baltimore area was for many the first exit on that hillbilly highway out of Appalachia.

She'll be playing at Uncle Calvin's Coffeehouse, a smoke- and alcohol-free venue that is known for the rapt, hear-a-pin-drop attention of the audience, and should be an excellent spot to hear Ms. Keating.