Until late last year, he earned his living as a stage actor. He aspires to write prose fiction and to make a documentary film about the music performed in South African townships of the 1950s and ’60s.

But for the moment, Johnny Flynn is a professional folk singer — arguably the most promising one to emerge at least since Idaho’s Josh Ritter started drawing comparisons to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen a couple years back. Flynn is more in the Nick Drake mold, draping his sharply observed, unabashedly literary lyrics in sensitive, autumnal melodies.