Did you miss John Gorka's performance at Craftsman House Gallery yesterday evening? Good news — you have another chance to see him tonight at Straz Center for Performing Arts. And it looks like the show has been upgraded to Carol Morsani Hall.

Gorka’s distinctive sound — a rugged baritone with undertones of sweet melancholy — has entranced folk fans since his breakout album in the early ‘90s, Land of the Bottom Line, which established both his sympathy for the down-and-out and his gift for writing lyrics that can break your heart and make you chuckle at the same time (“I saw a stranger with your hair, tried to make her give it back… And by the way, how is my heart? Haven’t seen it since you left.”). His 12th studio album, Bright Side of Down (Red House Records, 2014), finds him mining similar territory, backed up by such fellow beloved folkies as Eliza Gilkyson, Lucy Kaplansky and Claudia Schmidt, going from a jaunty tune about being trapped in a blizzard in Iowa (“Holed Up in Mason City”) to a tentative welcome of a warmer season in “Really Spring.” In between, he mourns for a crumbling town “where the new jobs don’t pay” in “High Horse”; sings what may be the cutest dad-to-daughter ditty ever, “Honeybee”; and strikes a characteristically self-mocking note in “Mind to Think”: “If I had a mind to think, I might do some damage.” In “Procrastination Blues,” he allows that he’s “well aware of the limits of my appeal,” but he doesn’t seem in danger of reaching those limits any time soon.

Mon., April 20, Carol Morsani Hall at Straz Center for Performing Arts; call the box office for ticket information — 813-229-7827.

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