Lauren Shera plays Monterey Live following Lincoln Center success.

Following interpretations of Bob Dylan songs performed by artists including Bob Mould, Joan Osborne and Natalie Merchant, a local 18-year-old singer/songwriter named Lauren Shera took the stage. Getting ready to launch into a cover of Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” (accompanied by the guitarist Warren Haynes of Gov’t Mule and The Allman Brothers), Shera tried to look out into the sold-out crowd of 2,738 people attending the tribute concert in New York City’s Lincoln Center this past November, but all she saw was the blinding white of the venue’s stage lights.

Then, for just a second, Shera, who has played large shows opening for acts including Phil Lesh and Jason Mraz, freaked out a little bit.

“I was seriously scared that I wasn’t going to be able to sing,” she recalls.

But, buoyed by having Haynes out there with her, Shera started playing the song. With her acoustic guitar work girded by Hayne’s watery soloing, Shera’s voice grew from a whisper to an impassioned singing and back again several times during the number. When the crowd let loose with applause at the end, Shera was thinking how weird it was that such a profound experience had passed by as fast as a blink of the eye.

It was a far cry from the first time she performed music in public, at Juice ‘N’ Java’s weekly open mic night in Pacific Grove five years ago. Back then she also did Dylan songs, along with covers of Joan Osborne numbers. “I wasn’t comfortable playing my own music,” Shera says.

She was writing her own stuff back then, though. At 13, she recalls putting a poem she wrote to music she had created on her guitar. “There was no structure to it,” she says. “It was just poetry with music to it.”

Shera was introduced to the world of folk music at a young age, when her multi-instrumentalist father would sing folk ditties to her and her siblings. Shera was immediately drawn to the music form. “There’s something about folk music—in all its simplicity—that’s beautiful,” she says.

By 16, Shera had enough of her songs to record a debut album. Now, looking back on the CD, titled A Million Light Years Long, Shera sees flaws in the work including overdone arrangements. “They just didn’t sound the way I wanted them to sound,” she says.

In 2006, Shera released her sophmore CD, titled In My Bones, which she thinks better reflects where she’s at right now musically. The album begins with “Hands of a Pirate,” an acoustic number that finds Shera asking her pirate lover “why can’t I be as good as the sea” over the low hum of a viola and the wash of a struck cymbal. The next song, “Blood Lust,” contains lyrics of vampires and werewolves over a banjo and a muffled stomp.

Shera says she wrote “Blood Lust” after seeing the yodeling New York-based banjo player Curtis Eller perform at Morgan’s coffee shop one evening. After the show, Shera went straight home and created the strangely moving number. “It was one of those nights where it inspired something in me,” she says.

The title track of In My Bones is pure coffeehouse folk that transcends the genre due to Shera’s powerful voice. The slow strummer “Earthquake” begins with a lyrical punch as the young songwriter sings, “I was not built to handle an earthquake like you.” Another song, “All the Good Boys,” rides along on handclaps and a bit of Dylan-esque harmonica playing.

Unlike A Million Light Years Long, Shera feels comfortable with the end result of In My Bones. “I feel like the record is a new beginning for me,” she says. “I just feel really proud of it, and I want to share it with people.”

People will hear it due in part to the fact that Bay Area agent Todd Cote—who also works with Devendra Banhart and Vetiver—has signed on to represent Shera. Next month, the young singer/songwriter will be performing at the famed South By Southwest Music Festival with other acts on Cote’s roster, including Alela Diane and Dodo Bird.

Before heading to the festival, Shera will be playing a show at Monterey Live this Monday with her 15-year-old sister Lindsay Candra. Though the spectacle of the Dylan show was overwhelming for Shera, she feels that a lot of the smaller shows where friends and family show up—probably like this Monterey Live gig—can be pretty nerve wracking. “I’m much more comfortable playing to a huge crowd of people I don’t know,” she says. “Than a small crowd of people I know.”

LAUREN SHERA plays Monterey Live, 414 Alvarado St. in Monterey, Monday, Feb. 26th, at 7:30pm. $12/advance; $15/day of the show. 375-5483.