GREENBANK — The blonde woman wears a silky blouse with her blue jeans, a pretty face and a near-perpetual smile as she steps up to the microphone with a guitar in her hands.

And Alyssa Ingersoll sings no matter where she is and to whomever will listen. She wants the whole world to hear her message: Peace at any cost. There are other messages as well, encapsulated in eight original songs, and she dreams of more as she chases the sometimes most elusive dream, recognition for her craft in a recording contract.

“I like to write about topics that make people think,” she said. “I like to reach an audience that would cause a paradigm shift in society on a higher level. I’d like to be on the radio and sing my song ‘What love has done’ so that people can relate to the power of love and the changes it can make in an individual basis.”

Through songs such as “What love has done,” which speaks of unconditional love in the face of troubling times and personal struggles, Ingersoll’s music has transcended her art into the realm of self-therapy and personal triumph.

“I was not putting my best foot forward and the people who loved me anyway inspired me to write that song because it was their love that made me change, made me want to change,” she said.

Lately, Ingersoll has found a home for her voice at Rockhoppers in Clinton, where she hosts Open Mic on Friday nights to mostly thin yet dedicated crowds. The lack of a fully-engaged music scene at the coffee bar in a town where commuters speed to the terminal rather than stop in, take a break and listen, does not daunt Ingersoll’s spirit.

Singing is in her blood and perhaps in her genetics.

“I am glad she is enjoying it,” Ingersoll’s 90-year-old grandmother Maxine Wight said. “My mother sang. She had a beautiful voice. My grandmother sang and my great grandmother sang, seven generations.”

Ingersoll’s 8-year-old daughter Crystal makes an eighth generation singer. From grandmother to Crystal, four of those generations live under one roof.

The 46-year-old Greenbank woman has been singing since she was four, listening to music such as Peter Paul and Mary’s “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

“I used to sing that all the time; a lot of the folk music. Everyday, I sang,” she said. “The greatest memory is when my mom had a PA system in the basement and I would go down there and practice.”

She also recalled spending time with her mother in the Maryland night-club music circuit.

“When I would go to some of her shows it made me feel special because I really love my mom,” she said.

Ingersoll’s mom, Rena Edelen, who also sang from an early age, turned away from a potentially promising career in music in favor of supporting and loving her children.

“From childhood, I knew that was what I wanted to do but I was busy doing other things,” Edelen said. “I got married and had children. Alyssa used to hold my guitar on her lap when she was itty-bitty. She always loved the music and would sing along. She was mad at me because I wouldn’t go be famous. But I had three children and I wouldn’t leave them. I wouldn’t trade them for that career.”

Ingersoll dreams of breaking free of some hardships and pursuing the career her mother left behind.

“Singing is all I want to do, but I mostly help take care of my family,” she said. “Right now, my goals are just to finish a full CD.

“I went to an independent record label, actually one of the largest in the world and they liked me and liked my songs but the timing was off.”

Now, she has the time to sing, however, and she sings whenever the urge strikes. You might see her strumming her guitar alongside the highway and singing her cache of songs to passers-by.

“I think music is very spiritual and it is so much a part of me and my expression, it almost feels like my guitar and my singing is more a part of me than my own arms,” she said. “My guitar goes with me everywhere and if my guitar is not with me, then I feel half-dead or something. Singing is essential to my life.”

While singing consumes Ingersoll, she also spends time writing the music and lyrics to songs that have taken years to form inside her.

“I am working on four or five more songs right now that should be finished within a year, maybe by Christmas,” she said. “That is a good goal. ‘What love has done’ took me about two weeks. I have a song that I have been working on for 10 years and I just started writing it. The makings of it were in my head; the idea. But I could never get the words. And it is going to be big.”

From questioning her spiritual purpose in life to financial stresses, Ingersoll finds a wealth of ideas that form the basis of most of her music.

“I think my struggle is very common. I am a mom, a parent,” she said. “I have had spiritual moments with God, wondering about God and who am I? What’s my purpose in life? I think my purpose in life is along the lines with my music. I have always been motivated spiritually by this force, pressing me to sing a message to people, like I am a messenger. All my songs came from that force.”

For Ingersoll, all the messages she sings of in her songs have a potential to reach other people. But getting the message out for others to hear has proved problematic.

“I am actually looking for places to record here where I can save money and still have the quality produced,” she said. “I am running into a lot of them. I found one in Freeland that I like. All my life, I have wanted to do fundraisers and charity events. Right now, I think the charity would just get me generating enough money to put myself in a better position to help others and to get the music out there.”

“I think she would like her songs to be heard by the world,” Edelen said. “She has some creative talent and something to give. What more terrific thing could there be than setting your life to music; even the sad parts? She is using her gifts. Most of us don’t discover our gifts until it is too late or we don’t know what to do with them even when we do discover them.”