Photo by Shannon Lee Zirkle

Her horticulturist husband, Christopher, tends to the fire, while a gray cat sits on top of a stereo, eyeing Hibbard as she strums guitar in her living room.

"I broke a string the other night," she said, smiling. "I was rocking out so hard!" She sat on a small stool and began to sing.

Immediately, the comparison to Jewel will be made. Both singers have the sweet, birdlike voice, with biting lyrics that cut through the tactful or shallow words other musicians might choose. The lyrics are not overly complicated or pretentious. They live in a reality most listeners can relate to because of their honesty.

Hibbard grew up on a dairy farm in northeastern Pennsylvania with a singer-songwriter mother and got her first guitar gig while still in high school. She then went to college in Ithaca, N.Y., still holding onto her guitar and honing her songwriting skills.

"There's a really supportive music scene there, especially for singer-songwriters," Hibbard said.

She recorded her self-titled album while living there and released it in 2000.

Some tracks on the album feature a male vocalist Scott Seltzer, a friend from college with whom Hibbard has since lost contact. He came from a Broadway background, she said, but introduced her to modern folk artists and brought her out of the '60s and '70s songwriters rut. She discovered people like Greg Brown, Patti Larkin, Martin Sexton.

Between college and the present, Hibbard moved around a lot, giving her an abundance of songwriting material, a lot of which is about traveling, relocating, living in various spaces.

She and her husband were living in Chapel Hill, N.C., for a while, but both their parents lived in Pennsylvania. Their decision to settle in Frederick , where they've lived for two years, came after examining a map to find a location between the two locales.

"A lot of my songs are place-oriented," she said. "I'm kind of visually oriented ... My lyrics are very visual, like I'm trying to paint a picture for somebody with words and music."

Since here, she has continued what she started in Ithaca, playing local gigs at coffee shops and restaurants and black box theaters around town and beyond.

"A lot of singer-songwriters don't like to busk," she said, referring to a recent gig at Studio 11, in downtown Frederick . "I think it's a great way to practice. It teaches me to play with distractions."

She'll perform at the art studio again this Saturday, during the Gallery Walk, as well as Brewer's Alley next Monday during their Songwriters Showcase -- an environment that is the opposite of busking: a listening room, lights, sound system.

Her stage name, Zaminy, started as an inside joke with herself, when a little girl told her she looks like a Zaminy, not a Jessica, her given name. She began singing as Zaminy for open mics in New York.

"I won an open mic and got five free hours in a recording studio," she said. "I took it as good luck."

Besides "moving songs," Hibbard has racked up a collection of romantic tunes.

"When I started out writing, it was all either love songs or, you know, not-in-love songs," she said.

Since she got married in 2003, she hasn't had as much drama in her life in that area.

"Gypsy," the first song on her album, stands out as being one of her strongest, and one that probably resonates with most girls in their twenties.

It begins, "Sometimes I think you are a gypsy, stealing my heart and running from me. But the truth is that I push you. I hold you at an arm's length until I'm free."

Hibbard said the song stemmed from her realization that no one wants to be dumped, that everyone wants to be the person who does the dumping in a relationship. It represents the beginning phase of a relationship, when both parties are secretly wondering if or how long the affair will last.

"I think anyone who's in the beginning stage of a relationship has this thought," she said. "The whole persona of a gypsy-type person who doesn't have any attachment, I think, at the time, was attractive to me."

Trying to veer away from traditional songwriting, Hibbard has been experimenting with using other perspectives in her recent songs. One written during summer 2007 is told from a child's point of view and is, basically, an ode to fireflies.

"('Strings') is probably about as political (or) philosophical as I get," she claimed. In the song, she stole a quote from Ralph Nader: "The difference between us and those before / is the velocity with which our knees hit the floor / and corporations come knocking at our door."

Of course, he didn't say it so sing-songy, she explained, but she heard its potential to become song lyrics and changed a few things around, taking out specific people's names, to make the quotation timeless -- and hers.

"The song is about how people and things exert their influence on us," she explained. "When I'm making a decision, am I doing it because it's something I want to do?"

During shows, Hibbard tends to throw in a few cover songs. Her clear, bright voice rings out easily over crowds of people, indoors or out. Her folkie guitar rhythms engage people, bringing a room together the way a large rug or vase of fresh flowers might.

Hibbard said people call themselves folk singers when they're acoustic and they don't have a better term to use. A fan of classic rock and jazz (some of which she hopes she absorbs by osmosis), Hibbard said, "If I could make up a name for my music, I might call it acoustic soul. I think there's a lot more of that going on now."