Liz Vice still doesn’t feel like a singer.

She never intended to be one: Up until she recorded her debut album, “There’s a Light,” released in September, she dreamed of being a filmmaker. Music, or at least performing, came to her much later on, after a long struggle with an autoimmune disease that eventually necessitated a kidney transplant.

She remembers singing a solo onstage for the first time on a Sunday in her new church. The song was “Enfold Me,” a plea for healing that holds special meaning for Vice given her own health issues (her band still performs the song in concert). After performing the song, she remembers being approached by friends and fellow church members in disbelief. She’s related the story in interviews before: Her friend comes up onstage, asks her, “What was that?” Her response: “I don’t know.”

“And I remember someone, my friend’s parent, came up to me; she was like, ‘I just have a word for you.’ I’m always so weary when someone has a word for me, (but) I’m like, sure, why not?” Vice said recently from her home in Portland. “And we went in the back room and she was like, ‘I think there’s more inside of there, but there’s some kind of wall that’s keeping you from really, fully embracing it and really letting out what you’re capable of letting out.’ And I’m like, ‘OK, sure, why not?’ I don’t know what that means; I sing once a month. Even to this day, I definitely feel like there’s something — I don’t know why I just can’t say, ‘Yes, this is what I was made to do.’”

Vice still struggles with stage fright. Last month the singer completed her first East Coast tour, which took her and her band from Boston to Atlanta, Georgia, and the whole time she dealt with anxiety onstage: “Probably the first three songs (each night), I felt paralyzed by fear,” she said. She’s back on the road this month for a West Coast leg that will land at the Volcanic Theatre Pub on Sunday night.

“I feel like even my body knows: You’re about to go onstage, increase heart rate now,” Vice said. “… Sometimes it beats so hard that I feel like I’m being choked and it’s terrifying, and like my legs get really heavy, and when I get stage fright I get really sleepy and lethargic and sluggish, and all I want to do is lay down in my bed. And I go onstage, and it probably takes about two or three songs to really say, ‘All right, fear, you have me in a headlock, but I’m still singing, so whatever.’”

Even if Vice is hesitant to call herself a musician, fans in her native Portland and beyond have begged to differ for the last year and a half. The CD release show in Portland for her Motown- and gospel-tinged debut album — recorded with Vice’s church band after a single day of rehearsals — sold out in 10 days. Vice has since played such Portland venues as Dante’s and the Hawthorne Theater; this year, she took the stage at Pickathon for the first time.

With the national release of “There’s a Light” in September, the rest of the world has started taking notice, too. Vice and the album were featured twice this year on National Public Radio, which described her first single “Empty Me Out” as having a “satisfying sound that pulls from Motown roots and offers a hopeful message.”

Vice toured the East Coast with a trio featuring keyboards and drums. For her West Coast tour, she’ll be able to bring a bassist with her; her Portland shows feature a full band with electric guitar, horns and backup singers.

The road brought new challenges for Vice, from an issue renting a car early on in the tour, to the daily grind of finding food and lodging for her bandmates at each stop. In order to fund the tour, she used money she’s been saving for seven years to make a short film, she said.

“Sometimes it’s hard for me to say I’m a musician now, but doing all the logistics of advancing and driving and feeding your bandmates and making sure you have housing, like me doing all of that stuff, it’s pretty tasking,” Vice said. “And then you’re like, oh yeah, I have to sing and emote these emotions through the songs and connect with the audience.”

Vice’s album came about as suddenly as the rest of her music career. The 10 songs on “There’s a Light” were written by Josh White, the pastor at the church Vice began attending after receiving her kidney transplant. She rehearsed for one day with the band from her church; two days later, they were recording the album.

“It was, ‘Hey Liz, I think these songs belong to you; I was gonna use it for another project, but I feel guilty that I want to keep them for myself, and I think your voice would be perfect for this,’” Vice said. “And I’m like, ‘OK, but you know I don’t do music, right?’ But for church, fine, why not? We’re gonna give it away for free and that’s it.”

Clearly, that’s not how it happened. Now Vice is singing gospel songs for secular audiences more often than not, and they’ve been embracing her just as much as the church-going crowd.

“I had a woman at the first show I ever did, she was like, ‘You almost made me believe in Jesus,’ and that’s like the best compliment I’ve ever had from singing these songs,” Vice said.

Though her songs do carry a religious message, she tries to keep her music grounded in everyday reality, drawing from her health struggles and her own insecurities. She’s writing her own material now, too, and has performed three or four of these new songs live.

“The reality is, is that whether you believe in Jesus or not, we all desire hope, we all desire love and we all desire light,” Vice said. “And that is what I’ve been told to do, is spread love, hope and light. … I don’t have to convince people, I don’t have to preach, I don’t have to force-feed people. I just spread hope, love and light.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7814, bmcelhiney@bendbulletin.com