The Maintenance Shop was packed from wall to wall Saturday night as 190-plus fans filled the venue to see folk rock singer Dar Williams.

The throngs of people waiting outside were called in by ticket number and those lucky enough to get front-row seats were so close their knees were able to touch the top edge of the stage.

The diversity of William’s fan base was accurately represented in the crowd that night as fans from as young as 5 years old to fans with gray hair, with a roughly equal amount of men and women, sat with anticipation for Williams to appear. The crowd, which had sold out the show a month prior to the performance, had within it a number of Williams fans who had traveled from as far as Nebraska for the event.

Craig Hoffman, a Lincoln, Neb., resident, had never seen Williams perform live before. He came after hearing Williams on her live CD. “There’s just so much poetry in her storytelling between sets, and when you combine that with the power of her lyrics and her beautiful singing voice —” Hoffman faded off with a smile and shrugged.

Williams, wearing a black dress that went slightly below her knees, with sequins on the front that glimmered in the red, blue and green lights overhead, and open-toed gold sequined shoes, deftly took the stage without much warning to the anticipant crowd. She dove into her first song in the same manner.

With no introduction and with no words other than a simple “all right” and a smile, Williams, alone on stage except for her guitar, stood in front of the microphone and started into her first tune, “Fishing in the Morning.” The song’s beautiful lyrics, along with Williams’ divinely melodic voice, overcame the crowd as they fell under her musical charm for the rest of the evening.

Sitting in the first couple of rows, her fans could feel a deep vibration resonate in their chest from each chord Williams strummed.

After her first song, Williams proceeded to plunge her personality into the crowd, drawing adoring laughter for most everything she said.

“Somebody said I had to go play at the Maintenance Shop in Ames a while ago,” Williams said. “They said that it was a really great scene. Then I looked at my itinerary and I thought, ‘Aren’t I playing at the Maintenance Shop? That’s right, I am — cool.’ “

For those seeing her play live for the first time, Williams proved to be a brilliant storyteller as well as performer. For each following song, Williams had a story that offered glimpses into her life, giving the show a personal atmosphere.

Before singing “The End of Summer,” Williams talked about a fourth grade teacher that she was very scared to have. She called upon a young girl in the audience who was around the age of a fourth-grader herself, and asked her what day her birthday was. The young girl answered that it was Feb. 19.

“February 19! That’s the day after my album release,” Williams laughed, mentioning that she wasn’t here to promote that or anything with a sly smile.

“Anyway, back around the time when I was in fourth grade, I remember thinking that somewhere, I will always be 9. That, even though I’m heading towards the double digits, and I’ll be there for a while, I’ll always be 9 somewhere.”

For each song Williams performed, the crowd gave her its full respect. In between Williams’ breaths, the room was flawlessly silent aside from the occasional squeak of a chair across the room.

Introducing her song “Spring Street” from her newest album, “The Green World,” Williams explained that she wrote the song during the time she was living in SoHo, New York City. The song is about life changes, and Williams spoke about her transitions and thoughts of her “gentrified neighborhood.”

“I’m afraid my inner self has become a gentrified neighborhood,” Williams said. “There used to be parts of myself which were independently owned which I have franchised.”

Picking up the pace, Williams performed “Are You Out There,” before tuning her guitar for the slower-paced crowd-pleaser, “Iowa.”

Taking a sip from a water bottle with a Cyclone logo circling it, her introduction for the song included how on April 19, 1994, she was driving toward Iowa City to open for Ani DiFranco, when she discovered the song.

“I was just driving along, enraptured by the landscape around me when I started seeing signs for Des Moines, immediately realizing I was going the wrong direction,” Williams said. “That’s what they call a happy mistake. I was so enraptured by it all that I wrote a song about it. It’s called ‘Iowa.’ “

Realizing what she was about to play, the crowd erupted into its biggest outburst yet, hollering and whistling its delight.

Williams encouraged the only-too-eager crowd to sing along with her during the song. Only a handful of the audience remained silent as the room reluctantly but steadily grew its voice.

“That’s very good — you guys know the song very well. However, I’d like to hear a little more harmony,” Williams jokingly critiqued the crowd.

Williams touched on other topics in her stories, ranging from conservative hippies in Missouri to how the “Say No to Drugs” campaign was hard for her to take seriously coming from a “super-skinny, large-eyed drug addict named Nancy Reagan.”

Williams made her exit to a much-deserved standing ovation.

“It’s nice that I got a standing ovation so you could see how short I am,” she said as she returned to the stage for an encore of two more songs.

Heidie Grove, graduate student in educational leadership and policy studies, said she believed Williams’ enthusiasm was “right up there” the whole time. “She has tons of enthusiasm; it looked like she was having a great time,” Grove said.