In a comedy club, the ''guitar guy'' comic falls somewhere just above the ''prop guy'' on the evolutionary scale. So it is understandable that Don White, Andrew Kerr, and Deirdre Flint, the three performers on the bill for tomorrow's 10th Annual Festival of Funny Songwriters at the Somerville Theatre, have a cautious relationship with the world of stand-up comedy.

White, who headlines this year's show, started out during the fabled comedy boom of the 1980s, weighing his options between performing at comedy clubs and coffeehouses.

White was still trying to find his direction when Robin Hordon, who was booking Catch a Rising Star in Harvard Square at the time, brought him into the club. ''He saw that I was making people laugh with my songs, so he hired me and gave me this tremendous education,'' White says. ''I worked there for two years, and in those days, we did nine shows in a week. And so I got a couple of years of trial by fire in the comedy world, which was really intimidating.

''I really did learn a tremendous amount, but I decided after that, and trying some comedy clubs, that I'd rather take what I learned and bring it over to places where people weren't drinking,'' White says. ''Now I feel like I have the entire group that doesn't like to go to comedy clubs but still likes to laugh. I feel like they're all mine.''

Kerr, who will be playing the festival for the first time, got his start as a stand-up comedian at Syracuse University in 1989, before the laugh-a-minute requirements of stand-up made him pick up a guitar. ''It felt a little too dependent on people laughing at every moment at what I did,'' Kerr says. ''It's sort of depressing. If the audience isn't laughing or isn't on one night or isn't comfortable or something, it just felt like so much pressure.''

Kerr much prefers the pace of a folk show, where he can choose to be funny or serious, and can take the audience where he wants it to go. ''It feels like a little less pressure because it's not all about just the comedy,'' Kerr says. ''There are songs as well. Even if the joke doesn't work, it's not really that big a deal.''

Flint has been performing as a singer-songwriter since 1993, after writing songs for her students as an elementary-school teacher. She has only recently tried stand-up, and she found it to have a completely different dynamic than a musical performance.

''Stand-up is pretty different from telling a funny story at a folk show,'' she says. ''Stand-up, there's a formula that you can't really stray from - setup, punch line, setup, punch line, setup, punch line. And if you're not doing that, they're not laughing.''

Still, she finds writing funny songs just as challenging. ''I would say that writing funny songs - that are truly funny - is very difficult,'' she says. ''A serious song, there's some sort of ambiguity as to whether it's a brilliant song. But a funny song, people are either laughing or they're not. There's really no in-between.''

White has found that the folk world is a bit more nurturing and patient with performers, and especially likes the atmosphere of the festival. ''You need to perform for people who will let you grow,'' he says. ''This festival, I think, it's the smartest group that I play for all year. I can experiment with things that are heady and amusing to me that won't work in other places.''

Kerr hopes to find the audience at the festival similar to those he has found playing Club Passim in Harvard Square. ''There's just always the right balance of attentive listening, but really great energy and feedback,'' he says. ''They give me - they sort of hoot and clap and holler, but they also don't talk through your songs. It's a cool balance.''

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