ALBANY — Life throws you curve balls. Hal Ketchum seems to catch those balls, sometimes fumble a bit, then throw them back out at us. At first they seem like regular county-folk songs sung by your dime-a-dozen handsome Nashville cowboy. But this Adirondack cowboy, raised in Greenwich, writes poems and short stories, paints, and can tell a story with or without a song.

“Good to be home,” he said away from the microphone at The Egg’s Swyer Theater Thursday night as he launched into the opener, “Invisible,” the first of 14 live songs he recorded two months ago for an upcoming album. He sang about free-falling so far to the point of panhandling, and then followed with another new one, “The Millionaire’s Wife,” about falling from another angle after sleeping with a millionaire’s wife.

Ketchum, and his three-man band, had a way of covertly turning smooth rides into near full-force rock, which happened on the second one they performed, guitarist Kenny Grimes grinding the first of many flashy solos.

“That’s upstate New York country music,” the 55-year-old Ketchum boasted after the tune.

Then came the break-out tune “Past the Point of Rescue,” which got the blood flowing for the small, mostly-filled theater.

The soulful “Waiting For Redemption, Praying For Grace” lumbered along beautifully but gained too much weight when Grimes played a metallic-like solo. Ketchum grounded it quickly with his earthy vocals.

Ketchum told a lot of stories between tunes, mostly about his warm feelings toward the region, and his promise to visit his hometown next year. Some probably appreciated the tales, but just as many would have preferred the time spent on his good music. At one point he confessed to talking too much, “but I’m real comfortable here.”

He told the band to leave so he could sing alone a tune about his grandparents, which he dedicated to his 58-year-old brother Frank, who was in the audience. He sang “Yesterday’s Gone.”

Later on came the spiritual ballad “Not a Stranger in the Eyes of the Maker.” Here he took the time to make eye contact with all parts of the theater while singing, like we were the congregation, him our secular preacher.

He pulled out a few hits at the right time, like the simple “I Know Where Love Lives,” and the sad “I Miss My Mary.”

“Travelling Teardrop Blues” came closest to a full-fledged Nashville tune, but even that couldn’t be cornered so easily.

He talked about living with his in-laws, losing his Cambridge home to an ex-wife and buying a great place in Texas on the river, where he raised his children along the Guadalupe River, leading into the song “Down Along the Guadalupe.”

It didn’t matter whether these were new stories, true stories, or borrowed stories, they were entertaining, self-effacing and familiar. “I’m not much, but I’m all I think about,” Ketchum joked.

He only comes home once a year, and Thursday night was a good night to get some lofty curves from the scraggly cowboy.