THREE OAKS — For Shawn Mullins, 1998 began like any other year.

He recorded a new album in February, self-released it in April, and traveled from gig to gig in his van to support it in May.

By December, however, Mullins’ career had taken a decidedly different turn. He had a major label deal with Columbia Records, a Top 10 single with the eventual Grammy-nominated hit “Lullaby,” and an album, “Soul’s Core,” that went on to sell more than a million copies.

“I was a bit of a reluctant rock star,” Mullins says by telephone from his home in Atlanta. “I wasn’t really that comfortable in that role. I never really saw that happening for me. So when it did I was like, ‘Wow this is crazy. I’m hanging out with Gene Simmons and Donny and Marie.’ There was just all that crazy weird overnight stuff that came with it.”

Although Mullins has only had a few minor hits since – “All In My Head,” “Shimmer” and “Beautiful Wreck” – his folksy, working-class narratives still connect to those who hear him play because he continues to sing them with such honesty. That has never been more apparent than on his current release, 2008’s “Honeydew,” which Mullins will continue to support with a tour stop Saturday at The Acorn Theater in Three Oaks.

“It’s been my worst-selling record by far,” Mullins says, “but it is really personal. I was trying to make the most honest expression I could. Some of it is the times we live in and some of it is the fact that I didn’t have a song that could bust out on radio. I know I can write pop songs, but sometimes I don’t want to. On this record,

I didn’t think that was what it was all about.”

The 42-year-old singer-songwriter grew up in Atlanta watching his grandfather, upright bass player Tom Brown, play big band, jazz, dixieland and polka at various Georgia dance halls. By the mid-1970s, when Mullins was 10 years old, he asked his brother Mark to show him a few chords on the guitar. But it was a chance meeting with Amy Ray of Indigo Girls fame that helped set Mullins on his path.

“I was a freshman at Clarkston High School, and she was in her first year at Emory College,” Mullins says. “She had come to my school to talk about being a professional musician. She sang some songs, and I was blown away. I mean everyone was moved, but I was especially moved and stayed after that presentation and talked to her for a while.”

A week later, Ray sent Mullins a three-page letter filled with advice and invited him to see her perform in a new band called Saliers and Ray. Two years later they became the Indigo Girls.

“By my freshman year in college, I was writing a lot more songs and put out my first little record when I was 20,” Mullins says. “She was the first set of ears I let hear it, and she really loved one of the songs. I mean I was just starting out. I didn’t even know what I was writing about. I hadn’t lived enough. But they were both really encouraging. When I was ready, they let me start opening shows for them. It was a huge thing for me, just getting that support.”

Mullins soon joined drummer Mickey Hendrix and bassist Carlton Brown to form the trio Shawn Eric Mullins with Twice Removed, a combo that would help carry him to regional notoriety, before heading out on his own to release a a series of indie CDs and playing hole-in-the-wall venues for tips. Then he wrote “Lullaby.”

“It was nine years of putting out records and getting in the van and touring the country and selling, at most, a couple thousand a year,” Mullins says. “Nine years is a long time, but I had gotten used to that. I didn’t stay in hotels very much, I kind of lived in the van and used campgrounds, and things like that. So when (‘Lullaby’) happened it was, to say the least, life changing.”

Mullins says the song’s popularity can, in part, be attributed to Leslie Fram, the program director for 99X, an alternative radio station in Atlanta.

“She called me into the station, and she said, ‘Look man, I think this song is a hit. I really believe in this, and I’d love to champion this and help get it going for you but I need a couple boxes of CDs,’” Mullins says. “So I gave her 60 copies, and she sent out letters and CDs to all these programmers and music directors that she knew, and that’s really what got that happening. I was charting even before I had a deal.”

By 2001, Mullins was asked to pen a few songs with fellow solo artists Matthew Sweet and Pete Droge. The trio recorded a demo that soon had their managers scrambling for a record deal. The side project, dubbed The Thorns, spent the next three years touring and releasing the self-titled debut in 2003.

“None of us were all that excited about being in a band, really,” Mullins says. “But we all kind of came around. We were all in a place in our careers where we needed to do something else. It was fun, and we enjoyed the music, but those two guys, honestly, didn’t get along that well. And sometimes I didn’t get along with either one of them. It made it difficult to travel around the world together. So by the time it was wrapped up, we couldn’t wait to get back to what we each do.”

In 2006, Mullins released his first solo album on new label Vanguard Records, “9th Ward Pickin Parlor,” that featured the single “Beautiful Wreck.” He immediately began work on his 2008 Vanguard follow-up “Honeydew.” when his mother, Barbara Mullins, passed away.

“Grief for me was just paralyzing,” Mullins says. “I had to kind of tough it out. I was halfway finished with writing the record when this devastation went down. I don’t think a lot of the songs are really sad or dark, but they are certainly written from that place.”

Recorded at Creekside Station, the home studio of Gerry Hansen, Mullins’ longtime drummer, the album also features bassist Patrick Blanchard, multi-instrumentalist Clay Cook, B-3/Wurlitzer specialist Marty Kearns, mandolin player Kip Conner and Sheryl Crow guitarist Peter Stroud.

Also making appearances are Atlanta blues and soul legend Francine Reed, who brings her low-down wail to “Homeless Joe” and a dash of southern gentility to “All in My Head,” and Australian alt-country artist Kasey Chambers, whose backing vocals are featured on “Cabbagetown.”

Although some of Mullins earlier recordings are set in specific parts of the country, “Honeydew” is the first to be rooted in the South. It features character sketches of the people Mullins has come to know, from “The Ballad of Kathryn Johnston,” about a woman living in a crime-infested Atlanta neighborhood, to “Homeless Joe,” about the strumming troubadours in Atlanta’s streets.

“ I think I’ve grown a lot as a songwriter,” Mullins says. “Part of it stems from the fact that I finally feel complete artistic freedom, and because of that, the songs on this record say exactly what I wanted to say.”

In addition to his own music, Mullins has been co-writing songs with several other artists. Most notably, he co-wrote the No. 1 country music hit “Toes” for the Zac Brown Band. He’s only recently stepped back into the studio to record his next record, tentatively titled, “Light You Up.”

“I’m in love with it so far,” Mullins says. “We’ve recorded eight songs live in a cabin I have. It doesn’t sound like it was recorded in a studio, because it wasn’t. But I’d say I’m about halfway done.”

Mullins also says he’s in no hurry to release it. That type of industry pressure no longer exists for the indie musician. That’s why he’s taking the time to go back on the road, just like he did before “Lullaby,” to test new material on audiences like the one that will gather in Three Oaks to hear him play and maybe even buy a CD or two.

“I’ll be playing some of the old stuff; some of the songs that came out before ‘Soul’s Core’ for the hardcore fans,” Mullins says. “They’ll be some new stuff, too, and, of course, I’ll play the hit.”

jbonfiglio@TheH-P.com