Folk rocker Melissa Ferrick expects fans to start screaming for her erotically-charged hit “Drive” by the second or third song of her set tonight.

But they’ll have to wait.

“The joke is that you must suffer through all of my sappy, folksy love songs before I’ll play `Drive,'” said Ferrick last Friday by telephone from Chicago. “I always play that one last.”

The song is a purposely sensual love song. “I love early Prince and when I went to make that track, that’s what I was going after,” Ferrick said.

“My jaw did drop when I heard it,” said Maintenance Shop Coordinator Eric Yarwood, who saw Ferrick perform the song at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas. “It’s a pretty intense song.”

But there’s much more to Ferrick’s music than a sexy single.

“Right now, it seems you’re either a breakup/love songwriter or a political songwriter,” she said, adding that she admires Ani DiFranco, who manages to do both.

Ferrick fiercely rejects both the musical stereotypes and the societal stereotypes she has encountered, including being described in the press as “a lesbian singer-songwriter.”

“The whole lesbian thing is just so boring at this point,” Ferrick said. “I don’t see `heterosexual singer-songwriter’ next to Dave Matthews’ name.”

Ferrick looks forward to the day when her sexual orientation is not an issue.

“It is not my goal to change people’s minds,” Ferrick said. “It is my goal to feel safer and safer in my own skin.”

This spring, she backed out of a scheduled performance at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival because it was a “separatist community” and because the festival didn’t allow transgendered people.

“That’s not the community I hang with,” Ferrick said.

When it comes to festivals, Ferrick thinks that “everyone should be invited, no matter who you’re sleeping with.”

Ferrick is currently promoting her seventh album, “Valentine Heartache,” the first on her own Right On Records label.

“Valentine Heartache” produced the album, wrote all of the lyrics except for the final track and played all of the instruments except for the drums.

Ferrick wants to work with the producers, who have worked with Dave Matthews Band and Alanis Morrisette, but they are beyond her financial means at the moment.

For now, Ferrick is just enjoying being her own boss. “I can put out an album whenever,” Ferrick said, “It’s pretty freeing in that way.”

She hopes to hit the studio again in January and have a new album out by March or April.

In the end, she loves working with people who are passionate about music. “There still are those people, even in this day and age,” Ferrick said.