Not too many years ago, Deana Carter was jumping up and down bouncing about the stage after she was just won single and song of the year for "Strawberry Wine" from the Country Music Association after her smash debut album "Did I Shave My Legs For This?"
Six years later, Deana Carter is more circumspect about the music industry, but seemingly ever determined about her own career.
And Carter, who left Nashville for Los Angeles a few years ago, thinks the new music represents exactly who she is in 2003.
"I'm so in love with this album," Carter says in a telephone interview from a Nashville hotel room. "It feels like my skin. I can say that because it's very similar to the making of the first record where I had a lot of time to work on it. What I have I had - at least three years, four years?"
That's not going to be the case forever," says Carter, joking. "I'll be 60 when the third album comes out for Arista."
"This album just represents my personality I think. This record is kind of a very ironic, humorous, sarcastic twist of what I've been through in my life."
And Carter sure has gone through a lot in recent years including a divorce from her husband Chris DiCroce and a split from Capitol Records after three albums, only one of which did boffo business.
Carter started recording the music at her own house while she was still on the Capitol roster. "I was just writing songs," she says. "We (Capitol and Carter) were kind of at the end of our relationship. We were at wit's end. I was just writing about life about how I was feeling."
"I wasn't worried about whether it was pop or country or (about) marketing," Carter says.
Carter seems to have a good amount of angst regarding Capitol. "Our feelings for each other weren't great at the time," she says. "I was trying to get somebody to fall in love with me. Every song I gave them, they turned down. They sent me a very clear message that they weren't into what I was into."
"I just think with so many executive changes there, I don't think they knew who I was," Carter says. She says she went through 5 label heads in 10 years there.
"I think they thought I was this chick singer who had hits, but didn't write the songs. They didn't take inventory on my artistry and my production and the whole thing. I'm the whole ball of wax. They didn't appreciate it to be honest with you?"
"What else am I going to do?" she asks. "I'm a songwriter/producer. I'm just going to keep doing that."
"When they turned down half this record, which was an honest place in my life, I knew it was time to move on. I wasn't willing to compromise my artistry." Capitol could not be reached for comment.
Carter worked out a deal to leave Capitol, though she did not supply the details. And, in turn, Arista quickly came on the scene and signed her to a deal.
"They needed to do the right thing at the end of the day," Carter says of Capitol. "They made it tough for me to get out in a way, but they knew it was the right thing to do. They were kind of bullying a little bit. My managers were like 'Come on. This is not a win win situation for anybody.'"
Carter credits RCA (the parent label of Arista) head Joe Galante with helping in the deal.
"It's all kissy face now," Carter says of her relationship with Capitol.
"The ironic thing is that Capitol will probably make some money off a record they didn't believe in," Carter says. "But to me, it's worth it. Fine. It's worth it to be in a label that believes in me."
Carter, who produced, received help from Dann Huff. He tends to add a more rock-based sound to the music he produces. "He called me and said 'if I could ever work with you, it'd be great.' I said, 'what are you doing tomorrow?'"
"I had been over a year working on these tracks, so he came in and helped me with the new stuff. It's collaboration for sure."
"The first record I did with Chris Farren," Carter says. "I did a lot of that (production), but never got credit for it, which was unfair. This time around, I want to take the credit."
The new disc starts with the catchy, pop-oriented title track, which Carter co-wrote with Billy Mann, who had a short recording career with A&M in the ' 90s. The song talks about going around the world to see life abroad, but when it comes down to it, the viewpoint is one of a simple girl seeking the life's basic pleasures.
"It's so ironic that Billy and I wrote it in '99 and all the American references (apple pie, Chevrolet) took on meaning for us obviously. I'm proud of the honesty in this record in general. It's just making a statement about me and how I feel about myself, and you just need to be yourself."
"More than anything, it's just saying the simple things are all you need whether it's Swedish or German or American or whatever."
Carter also recorded the very country sounding "Waiting" with fellow Angeleno Dwight Yoakam.
"He lives in LA four miles from my house to be exactly. (When thinking about) the writing process I thought there are some people I want to write with. I just called him and asked him if he wanted to write. I didn't plan it on a duet until we got into the room. It just worked out that way. It's nostalgic of George Harrison and a little bit of Bread. It's kind of got kind of a classic rock feel to it."
While the first time Carter recorded with Yoakam, she had previously toured with him.
"Dwight's cool. He's a little edgier, a little different. He's revered as an icon I think."
Carter, who certainly possesses cover girl looks, gets humorous on "Cover of a Magazine," a co-write with Wendy Waldman, part of the SoCal rock community in the '70s with several albums of her own. Now she's more known for songwriting.
"I always have magazines. I'm a magazine whore. I love magazines and articles. I was writing with Wendy, and I've got these magazinesŠAll of these people are on the cover. I want to do that sometime. It's my sick fantasy to be a Cosmo cover. We were sitting and laughing. It came out as a lot of laughter from girls."
"Me and the Radio" is one of the more autobiographical songs on the album "basically deciding to leave Nashville and go to LA. That one is probably the most directed at my divorce and a turning point in my life to having to make a conscious choice to move on. That song to me represents that no matter what you do for a living, all we have is music to get through certain situations. The only thing that can help you feel better or help you run 10 miles might be music. I think that song represents that."
"It's also being real honest for me as an artist and stating what my true influences are, and that is folk rock. That's an honest statement from me."
Music was in Carter's blood thanks to father Fred Carter, well known as a session musician. He played on Bob Dylan's "Nashville Skyline" and did the guitar work on Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer" and "Sounds of Silence." He also toured with The Band.
"Even though I grew up in Nashville, I didn't absorb the country influence as much as maybe those that weren't from here and came here and had more of that influence. For me, I could never do a country heritage show or a retro show. I don't know. It's not that I don't care or don't respect it. It just wasn't my influence."
"I didn't pick up appreciation of country music until the mid '80s when I heard Randy Travis sing," says Carter.
"It's not me trying to be a rebel at all. I had a plethora of influences. In the house every day was George Benson and the Bee Gees. All kinds of music going on. More than anything, I love the songwriters whether it was Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty. Dolly Parton. I knew as a kid who wrote and who didn't."
"That's what I gravitated to from a very early age. There's no one who loves one kind of music."
After trying but failing to get a record deal at 17, Carter opted for the University of Tennessee where she studied rehabilitation therapy. Her father gave her her first guitar when she was a senior in college.
While waiting tables at Zaney's, a Nashville comedy club, Carter learned about the art of performing. She also hit the writer's night club circuit for a few years.
Deciding that her future lay in music, she quit therapy for music, but had to do a stint of odd jobs along the way like cleaning, selling china door to door and temp work.
Thanks to hearing a demo, Willie Nelson gave Carter her first break by signing her up to perform at Farm Aid 1994 without any music out.
Carter hooked up with Capitol. Label head Jimmy Bowen produced and "Did I Shave My Legs For This?" was released in Europe in 1994, but not the U.S.
The next year, Scott Hendricks took over at Liberty and had Carter remake the album under producer Farren, but the disc wasn't out until September 1996.
Tthe first single, "Strawberry Wine," may have been a career song. The simple, laid back song with sweet singing from Carter is a slice of life about a first romance.
It turned into a huge hit, but it wasn't necessarily meant to be. Label execs weren't so sure about releasing the song as the first single. "I've Loved Enough to Know" was going to be the first single until a tour of radio stations by Carter had programmers asking for "Strawberry Wine."
Two weeks before the release of the first single, a fortuitous change was made. "At the time that record came out, it was pretty left field," says Carter. "It was off the radar for what people had been programmed to listen to."
Carter followed that up with the hits "We Danced Anyway" and the title cut "Did I Shave My Legs For This?," which the label wasn't always so wild about as the title.
Carter's second album "Everything's Going to Be Alright" followed in 1998. What did not follow were any hits.
Carter seems to harbor no regrets about the album. "It sold almost a million records. That was what pushed us up close to 6 million. It helped me live and eat and pay my mortgage. It was a bummer that it didn't sell 10 million. At the same time, the face of music had changed. We had different faces and a different mood. You have to be willing to go with the flow. I didn't take it personally."
But once again Carter minces no words about Capitol.
When asked if the label could have done more to make the soph disc a hit, Carter says, "Oh definitely."
"Buy me advertising time outside of 2-4 a.m. It was a real vindictive kind of situation. Hey, I don't have to worry about that any more."
"To them, I was just a phenomenon that just happened."
Two years ago, Carter released a Christmas album she did with her father, which Rounder distributed.
While without a real record label home Carter also had problems on the personal side.
After six years of marriage to fellow musician DiCroce, they split.
"Obviously, it's going to have a big effect on it," Carter says of the divorce's impact on her music. "What I'm proud of on this record is going through this adversity. It's positive. It's a very comedic hooky sarcasm to the way I live my life. That's the way I live. I take it with a grain of salt. I get upset and then I laugh at it."
"This is a bummer, but at the same time, I was able to write about it," Carter says.
"Me and Tequila" makes references to her marriage. "Here you are divorced, and you could consider dating your husband again," she says. "I'm sure every song has some kind of undertone of what I was going through with Chris. It was my life."
"It's liberating is what it is for me. It makes you face your choices. When you have a good feeling for the outcome of those choices, you go 'okay, I'm cool. I'm on the right track.' It depends where you land. The song is where you landed because it's your perspective on the situation."
And Carter seems to have gained her perspective back about music and the marketplace.
"This album was started with the mindset that I'm just going to write with my life, my heart, my experience. I didn't want another record deal. (I thought) I'm going to go on the Internet and put out my own record. I wasn't going to do another record deal if it's gong to compromise my artistic integrity. I was prepared to go back to bartending and go on the Internet. I was already prepared to live life like that. I wasn't looking at a huge marketing plan."