Carlene Carter just can't be kept down.

Carter certainly does not need to cash in on her famous lineage of the Carters and the Cashes to make a name of herself.

After personal and musical ups and downs and changes throughout her career, Carter is back once again, having just released "Little Acts of Treason."

And this disc also marks yet another different musical period for Carter. "In a lot of ways it was the most I put myself into a record in the sense that I co-produced it and wrote half of it on my own," Carter said in a recent interview. "I just wanted to do it. It was almost as simple as that. I wanted to mature a little bit and move on. I still wanted to have my light-hearted and fun-loving Carlene stuff, but I also wanted to relate to the world that I am actually a woman and not a girl because I'm going to be 40. Sometimes I catch myself and I feel I'm not really being a grown up and I am very much a mom."

Carter, thrice-married with two grown children, marks number 40 Sept. 26.

Howie Epstein of Heartbreakers fame produced Carter's last two albums, but he had other commitments, including touring with Petty and producing John Prine.

"If I'd had waited again, we would still be waiting," Carter said. "I think it was also time for me step out a little bit more."

Carter credited label head James Stroud with being the one responsible for getting her to produce herself. "He said you could do it," she said. " If he says I can do it, I must be able to."

"I was terrified of producing myself because I had relied on Howie so much to keep me on direction," she said of the man whom she also has a relationship. "I had never really realized how much I had paid attention because I relied on him for things he could do that I didn't have to worry about. My security blanket was gone. My most trusted friend in the world would tell me what was wrong and tell me what was good. It was really strange for me to find out in myself to find I had all those qualities in myself for myself. I like a partner. I just enjoy the process of having somebody to bounce things off of. "

But at least on one occasion, that may have been a bit too much for Stroud. "One day he calls up and he says, 'what are you doing?'"

Carter told Stroud she just recorded Bingo in harmony.

Not the kids' song.

"Bingo's my dog," Carter said.

Stroud learned more than he bargained for. "'Carlene, I think it's best you don't tell me everything you do,'" Carter recalled Stroud saying.

"Little Acts of Treason" is one of Carter's strongest albums, filled with a batch of good songs and energy. The focal point is Carter's voice, capable of belting them out or taking it a notch down with ballads (the title track, "Change" and "The Winding Stream").

"Change" was an intensely personal song written at a low point where she was in a bad relationship and suffering from substance abuse. "I honestly thought I'd never record it," she said. "In my heart of hearts, I really wanted to. I thought for myself, I wanted to do it, but I wrote it for myself to remind myself. Its a constant reminder of how it could be."

The disc has garnered a series of positive reviews.

"I feel like I did a pretty good job for the first time," Carter said. "I went kicking and screaming. I ended up loving it. I'd like to do more of that stuff and not for myself. I'd like to find baby artists."

Carter acknowledges the musical diversity of the disc. "That's kind of how it turned out," she said. "It wasn't thought out. I've never been a huge fan of country music other than the really traditional stuff. 'The Winding Stream,' that to me is country music. The other stuff I call honky music. That's a different thing."

"I don't know if I fit into the country category," she said. "I don't know. I'm confused now." Carter has not always been exclusively a country artist. She did start out that way, however, as her grandmother, Maybelle Carter, taught her to play guitar.

Carlene first sang with the Carter Family when she was four. The Carters were considered the first family of country music, having formed almost seven decades ago.

"I'm aware of it," Carter said of the family legacy. "It's pretty much the way things are. Every time I do an interview, things come up. I'm really proud of it. I do kind of feel like I'm an extension of it, but I don't feel a pressure to be a carbon copy of music they did. What I learned from grandma and mom was to be my own self. I carry it on in my own way. I don't think they would want it any other way."

Carter's mother, June and aunt sing on the new album.

As for her singing childhood, Carter said, "It wasn't like I had to go to work with them. It was fun. I had a normal childhood when I was little. I went to church on Sunday. ..We never had any idea if we had any money or not. Rosie (not to be confused with Rosanne Cash, her half-sister and daughter of Johnny) and I mowed the grass. It was pretty normal. The only time (it wasn't was when) Mom married Big John, and he was at the height of his success at that point. We lived in this big house. People were all over him. It was a different kind of thing."

Carter eventually left that behind, marrying at 15, having a daughter, getting divorced, remarrying at 19, having a son.

Still interested in music, she managed to get a record deal with Warner Brothers and released "Carlene Carter" in 1978. "When I first got my record deal, I didn't know what I was doing," she said. "I didn't do about sticking in some sort of format."

She enjoyed both rock and country. "I didn't know how to combine my two selves," she said. "There are two parts of myself that certain kind of music. I'm happiest when I combine those two, the perfect combination."

"I just hadn't learned at that point," she said. " I didn't know how to combine them. I never had anybody to teach me how and to show me that it was okay. I learned my trial and error. I unfortunately made a lot of mistakes."

In fact, one of her albums was entitled "Two Sides to Every Woman."A single, "Do It in a Heartbeat," made the top 50 of the country charts.

"I didn't really know where I fit in, so how could I try to get there?" she said. "What I did get was a lot of input from managers. 'We have to go in a certain direction. We have to market you a certain way.' I was not what country wanted. They marketed me as a rock act."

After some lower-rung chart success, Carter moved to England married to Nick Lowe, the British pub rocker. "Musical Shapes" was an amalgam of musical tastes was out about 1980. She followed with "C'est C Bon," a poppish effort a few years later. She scored with a hit single, "I Couldn't Say No," a duet with Robert Ellis Orrall of Lynnfield, Mass., in 1983.

Carter also did acting, performing in the musical "Pump Boys and Dinettes" in London. Carter was not exactly playing the role of country first family scion.

"I spent years what people thought I was," she said. "That's when I stopped. I stopped because I didn't feel right. I didn't feel good, and it was getting out of hand. I had the experience of watching other people's careers. If I didn't pull back...I knew if I did another record that way, I was not going to have a career."

When her marriage failed, Carter returned to the family homestead in Madison, Tenn. She toured with her mother, June Carter and aunts Helen and Anita as the Carter Family for two years.

Upon returning to the states, she met Epstein, wrote with him and did a demo to get a record deal. "We couldn't believe it," she said. "It was so much more exciting for me the second time around. I know how precious it is."

She gained some airplay, singing a duet with country group Southern Pacific on their hit "Time's Up" in 1989.

Carter eventually made it back country-wise with "I Fell in Love" in 1990, and another single "Come on Back," both reaching the top five. The album, "I Fell in Love" made it to the top 20.

But a few other singles failed to make much of a dent on the charts.

Carter changed record labels, moving over to Giant and hit it big again a few years ago with "Every Little Thing," which also gained a lot of video play on television, from her album of the same name. But once again, follow-up singles did not have much chart action.

Carter was back on radio last year with "Something Already Gone," a single from the "Maverick" movie soundtrack.

Getting the new album out was no piece of cake either. The disc was slated to come out months ago, but Carter had to go back into the studio and record a few different songs.

"They always schedule these albums when it's totally unrealistic," she said, showing her do-it-my-way streak. "They schedule it in middle of when you have three days off to write an album. I can only do as much as I can do. It's only done when it's done. I can't give it up until I feel I can smile and go out there and talk about."

"I'd be doing them a disservice to play the calendar game and the schedule game because you can't put it out because Pam Tillis record is out that week," she said. "I don't want to live and die by that. I don't want my creativity to be ruled by a calendar. I wrote the majority of this album way before we were ready to record."

Carter recorded and tracked the album in Nashville and brought it to her Los Angeles home where she tinkered and toyed with the disc "which I don't know if anybody notices, but I do. There's a sound to it which is maybe a little bit teeny different. I just do a lot of stuff over and over and over again. I work real hard on my vocals."

" I don't think I'll ever please myself," she said. "I am a perfectionist to a certain degree, but I know when to stop too. I know you have to get on your life, and this is only one record. I don't have that hard of a time letting go of it. It's not done until it's done."

The album was a family affair as well. Carter's father, Carl Smith, considered one of the finest honky tonk singers until retiring in 1977, did a duet with his daughter on "Loose Talk."

At 68, Smith still can sing.

Amazingly enough, the two never sang together on record until the day before the recording session. "We sang it through like two times at the house," Carter said. "He don't need to practice... Singing with my father was intimidating... I was in awe."

" I was like 'wow,' Carter said. "I kept forgetting I should sing, that kind of stuff. Then he grabbed me by the arm. He said, 'it goes like this.' He sang clear as a bell, right on the button."

Carter said she "always wanted" to sing with her father, "but I didn't want to presume to (do) it on my dad... He left when he was rocking and the height of his career and never had to go through that horrible thing of the changing of the guard, which I think is so hard for people who are entertainers."

If Carter has her druthers, she said she would like to hang it up in five years." I can't ever imagine not writing or not playing on stage," Carter said. "I just don't know if I'd be road warrior." Carter did a short one-week tour, including stops in Portland and Boston in August around the time her album was released.

At one point, the road grind almost derailed Carter's career. "I don't tour like majority of country acts do," she said. "I tried touring constantly and tried to write and record. I felt it didn't work for me. I was miserable. It was the only point in my life where I thought I never want to do this again. I was burnt out. I had nothing to offer anybody. I had to pull off the road for awhile. I love to perform. "

Carter has charted her own course throughout her career. "I think for myself, every time I've done an album I've gone a little further on the ladder," she said. "I don't measure by how far I get up the chart. I look at it if I'm doing good work, if I'm singing better, if I'm writing better, if I'm making better records. If I ever get to point where I'm so damn great, there is no point at getting up in the morning."

"I try not let my music controlled by outside forces or by my bank accounts," she said. "I'm always on the brink of total financial disaster."

"Obviously, it's really nice to be able to make a living at this," she said. "I'm not rich. I'm not one of the top five females. I feel I do stand on my own two little feet. I don't feel I'm competing for the crown of top female queen or top female vocalist. I always wanted to be the great majestic ruler of my own planet."