Last Friday, the Cat in the Cream was graced with the presence of 23-year-old singer/songwriter Devon Sproule.

A part of Oberlin’s singer/songwriter series, Sproule came to the Cat from her hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, prepared for a close, intimate show. The audience crowded around the girlish songwriter. The gathering evoked images of a parent telling bedtime stories, the listeners enraptured and the teller consumed by the art. It was, at times, surprising to glance about and see students in street clothes, because the setting was so magical.

“My favorite colleges to play are the artsy colleges themselves, if that’s the positive adjective to use,” said Sproule.

Sproule was, in a word, adorable; her waif-like features contorted as she hit the high notes and her mouth crept into a smile as she sang. Eyes closed, she tapped her foot along with the beat, and her short hair bounced as she bent down in concentration. There was a quality about her countenance that was slightly off-kilter, that quality which makes artists sort of a work of art themselves.

“I like the image of a southern belle — hot, small, promiscuous,” she said, laughing.

Slowly she began her set, pausing to adjust her set list with her foot, and tuning in a rather decided manner.

Her first song was the Donaldson/Kahn standard, “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” a lighthearted love song that brought her show softly into being.

Her music is earthy and rich, combining sweet, smooth vocals with the grit of her guitar. She somehow is able to capture the sense of having your head in the clouds yet your feet on the ground at the same time.

Like many singer/songwriters today, Sproule’s music is hard to classify because of the fact that it is very nearly a new genre altogether. It’s rather folky, but with more introspection and less social commentary.

Her influences are mainly family and friends, especially her husband, Paul Curreri, who has toured in Oberlin, and his brother Matt Curreri. She also takes a great deal from “old standards” such as the music of Chet Baker and Miles Davis. When prodded, she mentioned several other artists she likes just as much as the Oberlin audience loved her: Etta James, Anita O’Day, Thelonius Monk, Django Reinhart and Lucinda Williams.

Sproule grew up in Twin Oaks, a 100-member commune founded in the ’60s in rural Virginia. She believes that this nurturing feminist environment helped her to acquire a strong sense of being that was separate from her gender, allowing her to get away from the “angry, confessional style” of music that is so prominent in the work of many female singer/songwriters today.

“I didn’t feel like there was much for me to proclaim myself,” said Sproule.

Instead, as was seen in her next few songs, she tends to derive many of her rich lyrics from her origins. She works to capture a Southern feel in her music, allowing a current of Appalachia and the Blue Ridge Mountains to flow beneath every song.

“It’s beautiful but kind of understated,” she said.

This simple appreciation of her home came through with strength in her closing song, one she herself had written, “Old Virginia Block.”

“I’ve got family in Canada, family in New York / I’ve got friends in every other place I’ve played / but I can’t keep from planting all my plans of family stuff / down between the weeds in the red dirt clay,” sang Sproule in this song.

The pieces she played displayed a whole spectrum of honest and organic lyrics, from the sweet innocence of young love to the more complicated thoughts that at times make it hard to sleep. Her fingers moved skillfully over the guitar with almost unbelievable ease.

Sproule’s domestic life has had a recent change. Recently married, Sproule has noticed her music take a turn toward a different perspective on everyday life.

“My songs started to have this half-domestic feel, kind of freaking out,” she said.

This was held to be true in her own song, “Keep Your Silver Shined,” which she performed for the appreciative crowd.

“When I’m not on tour, I spend my time in Charlottesville, with my husband Paul and sister-in-law Maria, both of whom I live with. There are a couple good bars in town, and some good live music. We bike when it’s warm enough,” Sproule said.

Sproule is still young, having recorded her first record and started touring nationally before the age of 18. She began to play guitar when she was 14.

“I got started playing on my dad’s three-quarter-size Guild guitar. He’s had it since he was 19, and over the years, has chipped all the varnish off, to reveal a lovely soft wood underneath...Once I moved to Charlottesville, when I was 16, and started playing gigs, it just sort of came together,” Sproule said.

She credits her relatively successful beginnings to her manager at the time, Jessica Bauconce, describing her as a “total hot shot” and commenting that in Sproule’s earliest shows, Bauconce would try to make the response of the audience appear greater by imitating the sounds of many people — whistling, cheering and furious applauding. She also boosted Sproule on her way to success by booking shows, arranging recordings and organizing publicity.

Now Sproule has acquired an early sense of confidence, the ability to laugh at herself in concert and a winsome way of asserting herself and her songs so they stick in your mind.

She sat after the show and sold some albums, chatting with the straggling audience members. In a moment she was engaged, listening intently to a student seeking advice in his own songwriting endeavors, nodding encouragingly and offering tangible ideas.

“Start playing around here, in Oberlin, always take a mailing list...before too long it’ll bring some sway...play every day, write every day,” Sproule said.

Other ears around the room tuned in, faces registered mental notes. Her delicate presence was as strong and compassionate as her songs can be. She willingly acknowledged the difficulty of her profession.

“It doesn’t come to me in a dream,” she said. “I keep a folder on my desktop that’s for batches of lyrics in the works.”

It was refreshing to hear an honest account of the sometimes-glorified life of a singer/songwriter.