Folk-pop musician Shawn Colvin may be best known for her Grammy-award winning single “Sunny Came Home,” but over the course of her nearly 30-year career, the talented singer/songwriter has produced a body of haunting and insightful work. She brings her collection of original tunes and clever covers to the Napa Valley Opera House stage Friday.  

Colvin’s original songs draw on her personal and often painful life experiences woven into unpredictable melodies on the guitar.  

Colvin, who began playing the guitar at age 10, has battled alcoholism and clinical depression, raised a daughter, split with her management, and divorced two men. Her work, heavily influenced by Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Jackson Browne, is not all angst, gloom and doom.

In “These Four Walls,” Colvin’s first release of original work since 2001, she continues to deal with personal themes of regret, abuse, depression and addiction, but embedded in the songs is a pensive sense of moving on. She describes the work as “a coming-of-age record … performed from the vantage point of someone who’s had a chance to glance back somewhat ruefully at where she’s been.”

After her mega hit, “Sunny,” Colvin has kept busy, though just under the radar of the mainstream limelight. Among other thngs, she voiced a character on the Simpsons, penned the theme song to Brooke Shields’ sit-com “Suddenly Susan” and performed at various Lilith Fair music festivals.

Shawn Colvin

Friday, Aug. 1, 8 p.m.

Napa Valley Opera House

Tickets, $35

Box Office 226-7372 or

www.nvoh.org