Russ DeVault

Kristen Hall - With Matthew Kahler. 10 p.m. Saturday. $ 5. Eddie's Attic, 515-B North McDonough St., Decatur. 377-4976.

Until now, husky-voiced singer-songwriter Kristen Hall has avoided total honesty in her lyrics, but she speaks candidly of how a three-month stay in a drug rehabilitation center triggered her musical career.

The turning point came when Ms. Hall, a Detroit native who grew up in Florida, went AWOL one night in 1988 to hear Atlantan Michelle Malone sing at the White Dot Tavern. "I had read that Michelle was playing and saw her picture in Creative Loafing like she was the next big thing, and then I realized that she and I had written some songs together the year before," says Ms. Hall, who performs Saturday at Eddie's Attic.

"So I sneak out of rehabilitation and find out that she's putting this song we wrote called 'Into the Night' on her record, and I offered to do her cover art and be her guitar technician because I had nothing else to do," Ms. Hall says. "I figured if she made money, I'd make money."

Neither musician has become filthy rich yet. But, after working with Ms. Malone and the Indigo Girls and recording the CD/cassette Fact and Fiction in 1991 for independent Daemon Records, Ms. Hall is doing more than getting by and staying clean. She even hopes to move to a larger label this year and prove that she's matured musically.

"I think that I've skirted the core issues that I want to discuss in music," Ms. Hall says. "I'm going to try to really get down to what I'm trying to say."

Not that her songs have been disposable. Ms. Hall sings effectively of "Empty Promises" and evokes nostalgia in "Peaches," but some songs on Fact and Fiction do seem reined in. "I think I feel freer to be a little more serious at this point," Ms. Hall says, adding that she has fretted about being "too heavy for Joe Public."

"I turned 30 this year, and my priorities have changed," she says. "The key for me was to sit down and make a choice to commit [to music] or get out. I decided music's what I want to do."