Everybody has a story to tell, if you only dig deeply enough. Florencia Iriondo’s begins in Tierra del Fuego at the Southern tip of Agentina, where she lived for the first 10 years of her life before moving with her then-pregnant artist mother and construction-worker father to New York City. Iriondo uses both narration and song to recount her journey, and the tug of war between her birthplace and the opportunities of the U.S., in her charming one-woman show South: Home Away From Home, which opened Wednesday in the basement tavern space of the Soho Playhouse.

The tunes, which she wrote with Luis D’Elias and Federico Diaz (who serves as music director and backs her on guitar, beside Agustin Uriburu on cello), have a simple folksy structure with the barest hint of a Latin influence. The melodies are marked by Iriondo punching out short phrases in a husky alto, with short runs or fluid leaps into a thin but appealing head voice. While she’s no belter, her voice sits gently on the air in her more plaintive songs, like an entrancingly quiet lullaby to her newborn sister and a hanky-ready breakup song about the end of her parents’ long marriage.

What’s missing from Iriondo’s songs, and from her narrative, is a specificity that would lift the material above the surface level. We get the broad outlines of her family story, the challenges for new immigrants in the ’90s, as well as show-and-tell moments sharing aspects of Argentine culture — including delicacies like chipas (cheese bread) and chocotortas (gooey chocolate brownies) passed in baskets to the audience. But there’s an impersonal, almost rote tour-guide quality to much of this, as if she hasn’t fully absorbed the advice of her still-in-Argentina abuela to “color outside the lines.”

That’s a shame, because Iriondo is a confident stage performer, with an inviting and toothy smile that draws you into her confidence. She has our attention, but she seems to be holding back what it felt like to live her story. Still, South offers a pleasant diversion with a talented songstress.