Dar Williams tries to keep the pressure off when she's writing songs.

She avoids deadlines, doesn't lock herself inside a room and refuses to settle for less than her best.

"It takes me anywhere from three days to a year to write a song," says Williams, who will perform March 12 at Harrisburg's Whitaker Center. "It can sort of lie dormant for a while. I consider that to be part of the craft. You don't push it. I've pushed it before and ended up with crumpled paper. Pushing it doesn't create results."

That doesn't mean Williams, who burst onto the folk music scene in 1993 when Razor & Tie Records released her debut, "The Honesty Room," is a passive receiver waiting for inspiration to strike.

Rather, Williams, who tackles weighty subjects with wit and humor, searches for her songs. She compares herself to a patient fisherman who plumbs the depths for a catch.

When Williams, who lives in the Hudson Valley area of New York with her husband and 5-year-old son, wrote the songs for her latest album, "The Promised Land," she spent her days surrounded by art.

"Eighty percent of my songs were written in some kind of open space," she says. "It's kind of like going out fishing. You go and you catch a line or you don't. The galleries and the museum and the sculpture park were like the water and you kind of throw your line in."

The approach paid off on "The Promised Land," a provocative album that showcases Williams' lovely soprano and her songcraft. Highlights include the uptempo "Go To the Woods," featuring a guest vocal by the like-minded Suzanne Vega, "Buzzer," a pop song about the Milgram experiments on obedience at Yale University in the 1960s, and "You Are Everyone," a meditation on the faithfulness of a true friend.

Though she calls herself a folkie, Williams, 41, has never let that keep her from straying into the realms of pop and even rock. She will be accompanied by a band when she performs in Harrisburg.

"Singer-songwriters can't easily figure out what genre it is so it goes all over the map," she says.

For "The Promised Land," Williams enlisted producer Brad Wood, who has worked with Liz Phair, the Smashing Pumpkins, Pete Yorn and Ben Lee.

Wood doesn't turn Williams into a rocker, but at times he does turn up the volume while at the same time keeping her vocals crystal clear so each and every lyric can be heard.

Considering she spends up to a year working on a single song, she certainly didn't want a producer rendering her lyrics indecipherable by burying her vocals in the mix.

THAT'S THE TICKET

Dar Williams & Jeffrey Gaines

Thurs., March 12, 7:30 p.m. $34

Sunoco Performance Theater

Whitaker Center, 222 Market St.

Harrisburg, 214-2787
www.whitakercenter.org