PRINCETON — Singer-songwriter Ben Bedford will take to the Princeton Coffeehouse stage at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

Hailed as “one of the best of the new generation of American singer-songwriters” (Len Jaffe, “Sounding Board”), Bedford grew up in central Illinois, just south of Springfield. Many of his songs are inspired by the history of the heartland and people who figure in Illinois history. Among them are union activist Mother Jones and young Chicagoan Emmett Till, whose brutal 1955 murder in Mississippi drew many into the civil rights movement. He’s also written songs about the 1909 Cherry Mine Disaster and the experience of homeless people on the streets of Springfield.

“Lincoln’s Man,” the title track on Bedford’s first album, tells the story of a young southern man who defies his family to become a soldier in the Union Army. “You don’t need to be on the ship to recognize the journey,” Bedford (who majored in history major at the University of Illinois) wrote in the introduction. He has said, “I grew up in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln.”