COURTESY PHOTO The story of Ojai singer-songwriter Rain Perry is being told onstage through Sunday by Theatre 150. Her multimedia memoir was developed with and directed by Kim Maxwell.

Rain Perry has a story to tell. Actually, the Ojai singer-songwriter has a story she must tell, of a life battered early by the sudden death of her mother, followed by an endless trip with a father who seemed stuck in the most irresponsible corner of the counterculture. It's that relationship that colors the rest of her experience.

Her multimedia memoir, "Cinderblock Bookshelves," developed with and directed by Kim Maxwell for Theater 150 in Ojai, deals with the ebb and flow of coping with the only parent she truly knew.

Traveling with a man of many talents but few achievements, Perry experienced life from the undercrust. Moving from one shabby home to another, always in settings where her father tried to get along on his wits and drugs, Perry learned to cope with having little and expecting more of the same. Even when her father fell heir to funds from the upper middle-class roots he'd left behind, he frittered it away, choosing lobster and artichokes or frivolous gadgets over the welfare of his child, or her education.

Left mostly to cope for herself as her father ran through a continuous series of women and dreams, Perry still shared her questions and concerns with him. Until she didn't. Their alienation came when she was nearly an adult and stopped asking her father for advice or following him in his attempts to "live freely, or live for free."

Perry's lifeline turned out to be her mother, who died at 27 but had achieved early success as a songwriter. Perry got a hand-me-down guitar from her father, but already ingrained was an ability to express her thoughts and emotions musically. She garnered success as a songwriter and performer before rheumatoid arthritis grasped the guitar from her hands. She was a grand-prize winner in the folk division of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest and the ROCKRGRL Discoveries Award, and a finalist at the Telluride Troubadour competition. Married and the mother of two daughters, Perry is known in Ojai as a performing artist and for her concert promotion.

In "Cinderblock Bookshelves," onstage through Sunday, Perry tells and sings her story with the aid of mostly happy family photos and the sensitive accompaniment of guitarist Danny B. Harvey, a distinguished musician in his own right.

Perry speaks of innocence gone too soon, of a bottomless well of tears, of finally being "Airborne." The interlaced songs are thoughtful and evocative, with a sure sense of image and emotion. The songs are available on a CD that Perry is launching simultaneously with the performance piece.

Perry's story is so intimate and sad, yet so braced with humor and common sense, that it's impossible not to feel at some level that you know her, even at first encounter. Somehow she has survived a chaotic upbringing that colored her most impressionable years to come out a winner.

Warm, deep and brave, Rain Perry is someone you won't regret getting to know, if only for 90 minutes of her fascinating life.

— E-mail Rita Moran at ritamoran@earthlink.net.