Susan Tedeschi’s previous album, Just Won’t Burn (Tone-Cool), made her a star. The CD was her international debut, and it won the blues singer and guitarist from Scituate a Best New Artist Grammy nomination, provided songs to movie soundtracks, and got plenty of radio play with "It Hurt So Bad" and "Rock Me Right." But the new Wait for Me (Tone-Cool) marks Tedeschi’s arrival as an artist.

Wait for Me is as deep and soulful as Just Won’t Burn was brash. It moves away from bar-band rave-ups and stomping rockers to favor unhurried Memphis grooves and ballads that allow the honeyed middle range of Tedeschi’s voice to flex its emotional muscles. And these are powerful indeed on the first single and opener, "Alone," which taps Al Green’s Hi Records hits as a blueprint for its smooth hooks and sensual delivery. "Wrapped in the Arms of Another" and her version of Dylan’s "Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right" are arranged as the kind of unadorned adult love songs few artists who sell more than a half-million CDs have the courage or instinct to record today. The first is simply Tedeschi at the microphone accompanied by pianist Kofi Burbridge, singing with beautiful resignation about a romance perhaps lost, her voice clear and full of spirit. The Dylan tune features local guitar wiz Kevin Barry, and the tone and twists of her voice give it a wider streak of compassion.

Then there’s "Wait for Me," the kind of sexy potboiler that Ray Charles built a career on, complete with swelling B-3 organ, a piano performance that’s contemplative perfection, and a tight, ripping guitar solo from Tedeschi. She punches several six-string blazes into the album, displaying a gritty attack and fat tone comparable to the late Johnny "Guitar" Watson’s. Traditionalists should be pleased with numbers like the shuffle "The Feeling Music Brings" and her gentle collaboration with the Cambridge-based country-blues duo Paul Rishell and Annie Raines. And "I Fell in Love" and "Hampnotized," the latter a tribute to Southern musical cult hero Colonel Bruce Hampton, prove she hasn’t forgotten how to dish out blues-rock bluster.

The overall mix of songs seems exactly right for Tedeschi: carefully chosen, varied, well arranged, smartly played, and sung with plenty of warmth and character. In short, Wait for Me is the kind of album that Bonnie Raitt, to whom Tedeschi has often been compared, used to sell by the millions.

And maybe there’s a hint of irony, or at least humor, in the album’s title. After all, Just Won’t Burn was issued back in 1998, though the Grammy nomination it sparked, which pitted Tedeschi against Macy Gray, Kid Rock, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera, didn’t come until 2000. "I wasn’t ready for that at all," she explained when we spoke in her small dressing room at the FleetBoston Pavilion in September. She’d traveled there for a concert with B.B. King from the home she’s made with husband Derek Trucks (who’s guest guitarist on Wait for Me) and their baby, Charles, in Jacksonville. "I was really tired because I had already toured that record to death for two years. Getting the nomination just threw me over the edge. I needed a break, but I had to just dive back into it. And it made a lot of pressure for the next CD."

When word spread that an album Tedeschi recorded in a Louisiana studio right after getting her Grammy nod had been canned, rumors began to fly about her ability to deliver a proper follow-up to Just Won’t Burn. Music-business practice dictates that an artist should butter her toast while it’s hot. But the truth is that Tedeschi shelved the album herself. "I just didn’t like it when we finished. I mean, it’s probably a fine album, but it was a little too rock and pop, and I wanted to get away from that. I didn’t want to have to sing that kind of material every night. I wanted to play songs that were more soul-, gospel-, and blues-oriented."

So Tedeschi made her Wellesley Hills–based label wait for Wait for Me. It arrived in stores this past Tuesday, just as she returned to Boston to spend two nights at the FleetCenter as vocalist for the Other Ones, the band led by Grateful Dead survivors Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, and Mickey Hart. She’ll be part of the group for a two-week tour, and if that’s not enough to expand her audience, there’s "Alone," which debuted as the #1 most-added single on the Adult Alternative radio chart. Industry bible Billboard also trumpeted the song as "the one to at last break the hard-working Tedeschi." But the 32-year-old feels she arrived well before she sold 600,000 albums or got her Grammy shot — when she was first truly embraced and accepted by the artists and the culture of the blues that she holds so dear.

"Maybe it was when they opened the House of Blues in Cambridge 10 years ago and I got to sing with James Cotton, or the night I sang there with Otis Clay," Tedeschi said when we spoke again last week. "Or maybe in 1994, when we represented Boston in the national battle of the blues bands at the New Daisy Theater in Memphis. We drove all the way there for a 10-minute show, but it was thrilling to be among people like Rufus Thomas and Robert Lockwood, and then we played the King Biscuit Festival in Helena, Arkansas, that same weekend. I’ve sung with Magic Slim, Buckwheat Zydeco, Irma Thomas, and Buddy Guy. All of the great blues artists that I’ve met have just been so sweet and open and kind to me. Those experiences have been so awesome and they’ve been so loving and generous.

She continues, chuckling softly, "The moments that I live for are when they invite you up to sing, and you can tell they’re thinking, ‘Oh, she’s a little white girl. What can she do?’ And then I start to sing and they go ‘Whoa!’ and start to smile."

JAMES O’BRIEN BREAKS OUT. What with the Adult Alternative radio format in full bloom and magazines like No Depression, Harp, and Paste on the newsstands, singer-songwriters seem to have more mainstream outlets today than they did in the alternative-rock era or at the height of "heavy" music’s recent run. That’s good and bad. As more performers pursue these avenues to the world, the music they make tends to become homogenized.

Boston’s James O’Brien, who plays Club Passim on December 4 opening for David Rovics, is a refreshing tonic for the grayness of the current singer-songwriter crop. An aspiring novelist turned musician, the 28-year-old takes the stage with the crackle of a lightning bolt, his songs charged with images of jackboots marching from Wall Street to your street, challenging the relentless, unfiltered flow of modern life’s data stream, and searching for strategies of solace and survival in a harder, greedier world. His kind of social commentary has been a pillar of the folksinger’s craft since the days of Joe Hill and Woody Guthrie, tight and smartly crafted, with bright wordplay and humor. And he backs it up — either solo on guitar or supported by a drummer — with a brand of charisma that smacks of budding stardom.

"Initially my singing and playing style grew out of watching Kurt Cobain in concert and on TV," he explains. "It was all about being physical from the neck up, just opening your mouth and letting it all blast out. Later, for me, it was all about Bob Dylan and learning how to rein that back and control it. It comes down to the idea of great American male voices. I’m drawn to performers who are very masculine presences who were vulnerable, dirty, defiant, and confounding. And Dylan, Cobain, Michael Stipe, Dan Bern, Bono, Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil — they’re all those things." Even if they’re not all American, their common language — rock and roll — is.

And O’Brien possesses those qualities. What’s more, his second album, currently in the works, is likely to take his already growing status on the New England folk scene up a few notches. It’s also likely to be quite different from his self-released debut, Life Underwater, since his music has evolved since its early-2000 release. The best hint on that generally introspective album of where he’s at today is "Colorado," a song inspired by the killings in Columbine, which were a turning point for him. "It was the first event I saw on the news that hit me in a way that produced anything more than fear or indifference," he recalls. "I had a deeply emotional reaction.

"Now, I think of myself as a songwriter that is trying to alert people to things that are happening in the world in a way that, maybe like me, can break them out of the moods of being afraid or indifferent. I don’t think that the role of the songwriter is to protest things so much as to point at them, to raise awareness about them. I think it’s the audience’s job to do the protesting."