Gilford native Katie Dobbins will conclude a three-city tour launching her sophomore album, There is Light, with a stop next to her hometown.
She’ll perform Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Belknap Mill in Laconia. Doors open at 6 p.m.
“It’ll be the last leg of the tour,” said Dobbins, who performed on previous Saturdays in Somerville, Mass., and Burlington, Vt.
Her first album, She is Free, was Dobbins’s entrance to the music world and a cumulation of songs she’d written from high school through 2017. Dobbins won the 2018 Best of N.H. Award at the New England Music Awards with it.
The new album is more focused. All the songs on There is Light were written and recorded in the last year or so. It was supposed to be five to seven songs; it ended up being 12.
For the new album, Dobbins said she tried to keep more of her live sound. There’s still a back-up band on the recordings, but they stay in the back. Dobbins said she wanted to make the vocals and lyrics stand out.
“If you like what you hear live, you’ll probably like what’s on the album,” Dobbins said.
On There is Light, Dobbins plays piano or guitar on each track in addition to singing, unlike She is Free when sometimes she left all accompaniment to the band.
She also worked with a different recording studio. For her first album, she worked with Ryan Ordway and Franz Haas at The Recording Co-op. For the second, she worked with Sean McLaughlin. Dobbins said the first producers she worked with relocated to Maine, so she went to work with someone closer to her current home in Somerville, Mass., on the second album.
“I’m proud of the journey it takes you on,” she said.
The album opens with “Photograph the Stars.” Dobbins said it begins with a longing for light.
The middle of the album brings more emotion and personal stories in songs such as “Unsent Letters,” “Little Light,” and “Home Without Walls.”
It ends on a hopeful note with “Believe” and “There’s a Light.”
With There is Light, she said she wanted to go deeper and more personal, but remain true to herself as an artist.
Dobbins recognizes there’s a lot of negativity in the world and that life can be overwhelming, but in all of that, there are opportunities to bring light and love into the world.
“Yes, it’s hard,” Dobbins said, ” but we have to have hope.”
Dobbins said the process for writing her songs depends. Sometimes it starts with a line or chord progression that comes to her while washing the dishes that lingers in her mind. Only later will she sit down to grow it into a full song.
Other times, like when she was driving home from having to put down her family’s elderly dog, a whole song comes out at once.
“Most of the songs that mean the most to me come unplanned,” Dobbins said.
At the Laconia show, Dobbins will be joined by Lindsey Sampson, a modern folk musician who performs solo as well as with the Boston band Visiting Wine.
The album is available from iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Bandcamp, Soundcloud and at the show.
Tickets are $15 at the door, $12 in advance or $10 for mailing list subscribers with a promo code. No food or beverages are provided on the premises, but attendees are encouraged to bring their own.