Before she performed &#x93;Leavin&#x92;,&#x94; the first song she ever wrote, Shelby Lynne had a story to tell to her audience in the Folly Theater. </p><p>She&#x92;d been living in Nashville for nearly a decade, trying to make a career out of singing other people&#x92;s songs. Five albums later, she decided she had things of her own to say and songs to write, so she bought a $40 12-string guitar, headed west and never looked back. &#x93;Leavin&#x92;&#x94; made it on her career-defining &#x93;I Am Shelby Lynne&#x94; album, a Grammy-winning collection of country-soul songs embellished with strings, horns, keyboards, background vocals and all types of guitars.</p><p>Friday night, that song and the rest of her set list took on a different context. Lynne is touring alone, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar. But instead of deflating her songs, the stripped-down versions laid bare her expressive, Southern-soulful voice and her lyrics, which express the joys and sorrows that attend life and its pursuit of love and happiness.</p><p>Lynne is no stranger to doing things on her own. She is touring on her most recent album, &#x93;Revelation Road,&#x94; which she wrote, performed and produced entirely by herself. She played 10 of its 11 tracks, in a show that lasted 90 minutes and comprised nearly two dozen songs.</p><p> All night the audience sat rapt and silent. During &#x93;Leavin&#x92;&#x94; and her stunning <span class="italic"> a cappella </span>version of &#x93;You Don&#x92;t Have to Say You Love Me,&#x94; the room was so still and hushed you could hear yourself breathe.</p><p> After each song there was heavy applause and the occasional shouts of approval. None was longer or louder than the ovation she got for the haunting &#x93;Heaven&#x92;s Only Days Down the Road,&#x94; a song written from the perspective of her father, who murdered her mother and killed himself when she was a teenager. After she was done, she stepped back and took a deep breath as applause, cheers and whistles rained upon her.</p><p>Lynne isn&#x92;t exactly an extrovert, but she developed a rapport with her audience, sharing a story or an aside before or after several songs. Before &#x93;Johnny Met June,&#x94; she talked about meeting Johnny and June Carter Cash at one of Willie Nelson&#x92;s picnics. Before &#x93;You Are My Sunshine,&#x94; her first encore, she told a story about her grandfather, who bought her first pair of cowboy boots at a rodeo in Jackson, Miss. </p><p>She got the crowd to sing along to that one after she restarted it because she was in the wrong key. They sang along also to a few rounds of the chorus to &#x93;Where I&#x92;m From,&#x94; a paean to her native Alabama.</p><p>She ended with &#x93;Your Lies,&#x94; one of her better songs about love in ruins, then &#x93;Iced Tea,&#x94; a warm gust of hope and love that expresses &#x93;bucket loads of gratitude.&#x94; The crowd was still with her on that one, listening to all she had to say, down to the last lyric and her final goodbye.