Songwriter enjoys being newcomer to folkie foursome

Introspective, sensitive folk music isn’t often associated with lots of laughter, but when up-and-coming singer-songwriter Lucy Kaplansky thinks about touring with John Gorka, Cheryl Wheeler and Cliff Eberhardt, she knows a good time will be had.

“These guys are all my friends,” said the New York-based Kaplansky recently in a telephone interview. “They’re all incredibly funny, so all we do is laugh.”

The folk-foursome will play the Camden Opera House today and the Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth Friday.

Kaplansky, whose fourth solo album, “Every Single Day,” is due out on Red House Records in September, is a newcomer to the group tour, which has included the likes of Patty Larkin, Christine Lavin and David Wilcox.

But though Kaplansky is the new kid on the bill, she is no newcomer to the contemporary folk scene, having sung in a duo in Greenwich Village with Shawn Colvin, and provided harmony for records by Nanci Griffith, Suzanne Vega, Gorka and others. She also performs in a trio called Cry, Cry, Cry, which includes Dar Williams and Richard Shindell.

The group tour provides the opportunity to interact musically with Gorka, Wheeler and Eberhardt, Kaplansky explained, because rather than have each perform solo sets, the four will take turns backing each other, and, at times, collaborating.

Working creatively with others is nothing new to Kaplansky. She currently writes songs with her husband, Richard Litvin, who is a professor at New York University. From Chicago originally, where she began singing in clubs, she moved to New York and, after a time, left music behind to pursue academic goals.

Eventually, Kaplansky earned a doctorate in psychology, and took a position in a New York hospital, working with chronically mentally ill adults. She said she hooked up with a good therapist herself, through whom she learned that she had made a wrong turn.

“I figured out after many years that I was running away from music,” she said. Though it was difficult to leave her patients, when she picked up her guitar and started performing and recording again, “I never looked back.”

Though there aren’t any overt connections between her work as a psychologist and as a songwriter, Kaplansky believes she has learned to “see” more clearly.

“I feel like I’m a better, more astute observer of the human condition,” she said.

The songs on her 1999 release, “Ten Year Night,” veer from confessional to cutting.

Gorka has recently released his eighth album, “The Company You Keep,” also on Red House Records. Rolling Stone magazine calls him “the preeminent male singer-songwriter of the New Folk movement.”

Wheeler, whose latest album, “Sylvia Hotel,” is out on the Philo label, is known for penning songs that have become hits for mainstream country artists like Suzy Bogguss and Dan Seals, but she also packs a punch with her political and social commentary songs, and is known as a crowd-pleasing performer.

Eberhardt’s recent Red House release, “Borders,” showcases his fine guitar work along with his powerful voice. His earlier albums earned him a reputation as a gifted storyteller in song.

Tickets are $23 and are available at Wild Rufus in Camden, the Grasshopper Shops in Ellsworth, Rockland and Bangor, Mr. Paperback in Belfast, Music Gallery in Waterville, Amadeus in Portland and the Music Bar in Bar Harbor.