Those dark topics shadowed many of the songs Mehta sang March 21 in Grand Forks’ Urban Stampede. She returns Tuesday to play in Tabula on University Avenue.

Her songs are not so much about sorrow as the journey through it, Mehta said, mulling over a cup of spiced tea.

In "Truly", for example, Mehta sings of an airplane crash: "It may be when you realize their last moments/ And you feel their lives in yours for just one second".

Six months after the crash of United Flight 93 in a Pennsylvania field, the words sung in her confident, rich voice can raise the hair on the back of one’s neck.

"I want (my writing) to be a bridge to other people’s experience," she said, "so people can see their commonalities." It just happens, she said, that she walks better with sorrow than with laughter.

But part of the sadness comes from the introspection of a singer/songwriter who is just coming into her own after seven years of toil.

"There is a lot of soul-searching," she said. "Does the world need another singer/songwriter? Does the world need another person to sing about their life?"

In Winnipeg, her hometown, Mehta is relatively well-known having played the Winnipeg Folk Festival and other music fests. Several record stores carry her debut CD, "Weather Vane." But here in the United States, Mehta still is obscure.

She said she still must make calls and sell her act to club owners. It’s like applying for a job every day, she said.

Some 90 percent of the job, Mehta said, is spent on the administrative side. "It takes the emphasis off the art," she said. "You have to find a balance."

But for Mehta, it’s all worth the low pay and long roads between venues because it allows her to do what makes her happy: to meet people and make the emotional connections at the heart of her songs.