TORONTO - She might have grown up listening to albums like Born to Run and The River.

Heck, she even plays shows that have just as much music and go almost as long as shows by The Boss.

But in the end, Melissa Etheridge has her own story to tell and she did just that over the course of a three-hour concert last night at Toronto's Massey Hall.

With no opening act in support, Etheridge and her strong four-piece backing band offered up a little bit of old with a lot of new material from her latest album The Awakening.

Yet it was the rather chronological, biographical story line Etheridge wove throughout the night which set the course for the set following an impromptu instrumental version of O Canada by the band's guitarist (and Toronto native) Philip Sayce.

After giving Sayce a friendly boot in the rear, Etheridge opened with All American Girl from her 1993 breakthrough album Yes I Am and quickly followed it up with a somewhat softer, lighter pop song entitled Into the Dark.

Stating that she was going to make some noise and complementing Toronto for its beauty, Etheridge began to tell the story of her life growing up in Kansas and feeling differently about "Kate Jackson and the Charlie's Angels" than the other girls her age.

But at times the pacing of the show seemed to wrap around her story almost too much. California was a decent roots-meets-pop number but the ensuing collage of Don't You Need and Similar Features didn't fare quite as strongly.

Fortunately Sayce was often the proverbial rock of the band, adding a lot of steak and sizzle from his guitar work on several early numbers such as An Unexpected Rain that had Etheridge giving just a hint of her Janis Joplin-like power.

Perhaps one of the glaring omissions though was not concluding the show with Joplin's Piece of My Heart, a spine-tingling performance she's done in encores often since her mesmerizing 2005 appearance during the Grammy Awards during her battle and victory over cancer.

Regardless though, Etheridge had many highlights during the show, whether it was her guitar duelling with Sayce during Bring Me Some Water or stopping to soak in the applause halfway through I Want To Come Over.

Another obvious highlight was halfway through when she opened I'm the Only One with a rather old-school bluesy flavouring before belting out the ending perfectly.

As much as the first half felt a bit more free-flowing and tended towards a jam-band feel, Etheridge kept things fairly tight for most of the second half. If I Wanted To seemed rather ordinary while I Want to be

In Love was melded with Mercy for a slightly better effort.

Perhaps the tune which went over the best wasn't so much I Need to Wake Up which earned her an Oscar Award in 2007 for Best Original Song as part of Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth. In fact it was I Run For Life, a track which deals with her battle with cancer which seemed to touch a nerve with many in the near-capacity audience.

To close the main portion, Etheridge opted for a combination of Open Your Mind which has some bite and the lengthy, politically-oriented The Awakening before taking some well-deserved bows.

While it wasn't Springsteen, it's nice to know that some still follow in his long-concert footsteps.