Despite the frequent use of down-home steel guitar in her songs, Mary Chapin Carpenter [ tickets ] is often more folk than country, her lyrics colored more by the state of the world than by the state of personal relationships.

This focus on more political issues became clear early on in her show Saturday (6/12) at the just-opened Vault 350 club in Long Beach, when, in her first song, she belted out commands to "believe in peace" and "put down your gun" to wild applause.

Her distance from Nashville is not that surprising: born in Princeton, NJ, and raised on the East Coast, her strong reception in the country world seems connected more to the old-style fiddle and mandolin infusing her work (as well as a handful of foot-stomping, whoop-worthy tunes), than to the sentiments her words convey.

Saturday's show featured many songs from her latest album, "Between Here and Gone," a collection of post-9/11 introspection that displays her quieter side. The title track, played midway through the show, reflects a feeling of displacement and longing: "Now I'm just wondering how we know where we belong"; while "Grand Central Station," about a Ground Zero worker traveling there and back, more directly tries to bring peaceful feelings to the grieving nation: "I guess you're never really all alone/Or too far from the pull of home/And the stars on that dome still shine."

But Carpenter, backed by her tight, long-faithful band, clearly knows how to step it up a notch and get the primarily female audience on its feet, too. Older songs, like the encore-worthy "He Thinks He'll Keep Her" and "I Feel Lucky," are about women standing up for themselves, though after the latter's lyrics ("Dwight Yoakam's in the corner, trying to catch my eye/Lyle Lovett's right beside me with his hand upon my thigh"), she had to offer the caveat that the song is more than ten years old, that Lyle and Dwight don't "blow my skirt up anymore," and that she's happily married.

Other barn-burners included the sly "Shut Up and Kiss Me," and a cover of Mark Knopfler's "The Bug." All of these songs brought out dueling guitar and piano solos, with her piano player (and "Here and Gone" co-producer), Matt Rollings, often playing piano and keyboards simultaneously.

As joyfully raucous as these songs can be, it says something about Carpenter's artistry that she would rather delve into more serious and thought-provoking work than rest on hootenanny hand-clappers. After an over-two-hour set that included two encores, she offered the closing song, "Goodnight America," which chronicles her often lonely life on the road ("I'm a stranger here/No one you would know"). But like other traveling ballads (think "City of New Orleans"), here she creates a restful lullaby and extends her hope for the future to her fellow citizens--just like a good folk song should.