The tagline for Suzanne Vega’s tour promised new songs, old songs, and other songs. In her recent performance at The Birchmere, she delivered all of that along with her charming stories and fine wit.

Vega’s second album, Solitude Standing, is widely credited with revitalizing the singer-songwriter genre in the mid-to-late ’80s. The album went platinum, and she scored a surprise hit with “Luka,” which went to No. 3 on the pop charts. That it became a hit is surprising because it dealt with the subject of child abuse. Her breakthrough success paved the way for artists like Shawn Colvin, Tracy Chapman, and the Indigo Girls.

Before she got to “Luka” at The Birchmere on Sept. 25, Suzanne kicked off her set with a number from her first, self-titled LP, “Marlene on the Wall,” which was inspired by Marlene Dietrich, an actress in Hollywood’s Golden Age. After taking the stage, she put on her trademark black top hat and launched into the song. It’s representative of what she does: Her songs often incorporate literary and cultural allusions. (She even wrote and performed in a one-woman show about the writer Carson McCullers, the songs from which she released on the album Belover, Beloved.) Vega came back to that album a few songs later, singing “Small Blue Thing” after performing the title cut from 99.5° and “Caramel.”

“Gypsy,” which also appeared on that first album, was “not my first song, but [it was] my first love song,” Vega said. She wrote it the summer she turned 18, when she escaped the confines of her native New York to work as a summer camp counselor in the Adirondacks. One night, she was at a bar frequented by the counselors, when a young man introduced himself and asked her, “Do you like Leonard Cohen?” In those days, she said, it was hard to find anyone who’d even heard of Cohen. Trying to remain nonchalant, she said, “I like Leonard Cohen some of the time,” to which he replied, “I love Leonard Cohen all the time.” (In truth, Leonard Cohen may be the artist she is most influenced by.)

Though they went their separate ways, she did hold on to the bandana he gave her, and she did see him again. Many years later, she was on tour in his home city, Liverpool, thinking of him while reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Those two things came together in “In Liverpool.” Eventually, he came to one of her shows in London, on her 45th birthday, and brought her flowers. They would see each other again when she opened for Leonard Cohen on her 50th birthday, and they continue to write to each other.

Watch the official music video for “In Liverpool” by Suzanne Vega on YouTube:

The set continued with “The Queen and the Soldier.” After singing it, she explained that she’d heard objections to the song’s ending; people have asked her why the queen and the soldier couldn’t just go somewhere and date. As promised, there were new songs, one of which was “Speaker’s Corner.”

“Every town square,” she said, “used to have a speaker’s corner.” (At Oberlin, where I went for college, we had Tappan Square, where we were frequently entertained by the fire-and-brimstone ranting of itinerant Evangelical preachers. My favorite was the one who claimed that, while out of his gourd on drugs at a Van Halen concert, he received a direct, personal message from Jesus. Jesus and David Lee Roth are both Jewish, so I can see how he might’ve mixed them up.) Vega encouraged everyone to vote this year after the song.

The night got a little with the next song, another new one, “about a very New York problem: rats,” which is influenced sonically by the Ramones and Fontaines DC. Rats, of course, are not unique to New York: every story about the old 9:30 Club seems to mention them, and I’d had my own rat experience just a few hours before the show, when I was walking down the street and a woman was poking the corpse of a rat with a frisbee. 

“Penitent” isn’t a new song — it appeared many years ago on the album Red & Gray — but the version we got Wednesday night was a new arrangement. That was followed by “Left of Center” and “I Never Wear White,” which, she said, “is mostly true;” she favors black clothing. The set was rounded out with “Some Journey,” “Luka,” and the slice-of-life classic “Tom’s Diner.”

For her encore, she sang a “very New York song by a very New York songwriter,” Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side.” “Tombstone,” she said, is, despite its title, “the most cheerful song I have.” She finished the evening with “Rosemary.”

I never get tired of seeing Suzanne Vega. She has an incredible voice, and its matched by songs that are equally strong. And, of course, there are stories, which are always fun and entertaining.