"I've just felt such freedom with this record," says Danni Leigh with a perceptible sigh of relief. Considering Leigh's checkered history over the past half dozen years, it's no surprise that "Divide and Conquer," the blonde honky-tonker's third album for as many labels in the last three years, represents a freer and more personal creative path than either of her first two.

The path for both of Leigh's previous releases - "29 Nights" for Decca in 1998 and "A Shot of Whiskey and a Prayer" for Monument/Sony in early 2000 - was marred by compromise and second guessing.

Leigh felt in both cases that to get along with the major labels, she was obliged to play along. In doing so, Leigh sacrificed a great deal of the creative decision making process, from song selections to arrangements to actual style.

Although she remains pleased with the final output, Leigh admits the discs could have been far better and more satisfying than they were. Still in all, Leigh is philosophical about her first attempts at recording.

"I'm one of those people that believes that everything happens for a reason, and the universe is so much smarter than we are, and I think there's always reasons for what happens," says Leigh honestly. "Obviously, I had to make those two records, and everything had to fall in place like it did in order for me to get to the point musically to be able to make this album."

Although Leigh diplomatically accepts equal responsibility over the demise of her first two albums, clearly much of the blame belongs to the entities that guided her.

"29 Nights" disappeared with Decca's acquisition and absorption in the Universal merger, and "Whiskey/Prayer" was simply ignored to death by Sony when the two singles pulled from the album failed to yield a discernible hit. The disc was released even though the label and Leigh already decided to split.

Regardless of the reasons, Leigh was forced to accept the fact that while she had accomplished her lifelong dream of making albums, they were not having the impact that she had anticipated.

To her credit, Leigh never thought of giving up on her dream; she merely retooled it. With help from her manager, former Decca honcho Sheila Shipley Biddy, Leigh attracted a pitch from upstart indie Audium Records and liked what she heard.

Although she and Shipley Biddy had briefly considered recording and releasing an album on their own, ultimately, the Audium offer was too good to pass up.

"Their ideas and their thoughts on what we should do were the same as ours," says Leigh. "I felt like creatively, they were going to give me the freedom that I really wanted. Before I said a word, I asked them what their practices were on production, and they said, 'You go out, and pick your producer, make the record, bring it to us and we figure out what the hell to do with it.' I said, 'That's beautiful, I love you guys!' And that's exactly what we did."

The biggest selling point that Audium made was in offering Leigh her choice of producers. She had been wrangling with labels from the start of her career to let her work with legendary honky tonk producer Pete Anderson, but they refused on the grounds that she might be saddled with the tag of "the female Dwight Yoakam," a fear that she scoffs at even today.

"I do honky tonk hillbilly music, but vocally I sound nothing like Dwight, and I never have," Leigh says with a laugh. "Influences, yeah, definitely. They come from Bakersfield. I'm lucky if I get a nasal sound out. And that's where he lives."

Working with Anderson was no mere pipe dream for Leigh. She had been in contact with him since before her first album, and he was eager to work with her, but each time he initiated conversations with Leigh's labels, he ultimately rejected their visions of her work and declined any further involvement.

With Audium's commitment to letting Leigh decide on a producer herself, the way was finally clear for she and Anderson to hit the studio together.

"You know, I've searched my memory bank in search of words to explain what it was like to finally get to work with him," says Leigh. "I've waited my whole musical career. I've been a fan of Pete's all the way across the board. I've already told Pete he's going to have to tell me to go the hell away if he ever wants to get rid of me. He's pretty much going to be working with me for the rest of my life, as far as I'm concerned. It was worth the wait."

As excited as Leigh was with the prospect of recording with Anderson, she was just as confident that she had assembled a killer collection of songs to bring to the table. She had scoured Nashville's publishing companies for good material, assisted by a pre-emptive call from Anderson, and she had written a few of her own, all of which seemed like pure winners to her.

"I got this fantastic collection of music together, and I went out to L.A. for pre-production with Pete, and everything that I had in my bag taking out there for the first time with Pete I really liked," says Leigh. "And I sat down with Pete, and all of a sudden he's going, 'Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.' His standards for a great song are much higher than most. And he played no favorites on my music. He was like, 'You needed to try harder there. You dropped the ball lyrically right there.' And he was right. Lots of time, you'll just choose the word that rhymes the easiest and stick it in there, instead of exploring a little bit. So, when we started going through songs, I realized that I didn't have near as many as I thought, and that it was going to take pretty special songs to please both of us."

Leigh began fine tuning the songs that she'd written, and Anderson helped with an archived wealth of hillbilly music that he'd held onto for himself or for his various production projects.

The songs that Leigh arrived with presented a problem of their own.

"The songs that I took out there were a batch of Jim Lauderdale songs," says Leigh. "And Pete was like, 'We can't just cut a tribute to Jim Lauderdale record on you. Let's get into some of the stuff I've got out here.' We found some '

great songs that fit me perfectly, in some of the most obscure places that I never would have looked."

Songwriting wasn't the only area where Anderson exercised his creative will. Leigh was constantly challenged by Anderson in all facets of the recording process to bring the intensity up a notch or two.

"I practiced acoustic guitar with Pete," says Leigh. "I'd be thinking I'm doing pretty good, and he'd come in and go, 'What is that note? That's not how that goes, do it like this.' He doesn't let you get away with stuff. He'll push you to your limit and then push your limit even further. You end up becoming a lot more diverse than when you got there. I always felt like I had more inside me, but I never ran into anyone that wanted to stretch the boundaries like that."

The other unfamiliar process that Anderson made Leigh adhere to was rehearsal. Leigh's band on "Divide and Conquer" is essentially the band that records and tours with Yoakam, and Anderson wanted to make sure that both Leigh and the band were well acquainted with the material before they entered the studio.

In a lot of ways, with the incredible amount of thought and rework and practice that went into creating "Divide and Conquer," the album almost feels like Leigh's debut all over again.

The irony of the situation is not lost on Leigh, who has endured more than her share of ironically bad breaks in her career.

Leigh grew up in a small town in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, not exactly a hotbed of musical opportunity, to a family that was naturally musically inclined. She sang at every possible school and church function as a child, remarking to her parents at the age of three, after a particularly successful appearance, that she wanted to be a star.

The dream remained through Leigh's high school days, continuing into her senior year when a guidance counselor tried to dissuade her from her fantasy singing career and follow her peers into college, a trade or the service.

Although she was slightly intimidated by the fact that her friends were all embarking on their careers and she was merely talking about hers, she remained steadfast in her determination to sing for a living. Leigh learned carpentry and put that to good use after high school, detouring into an office job which she hated and finally returning to carpentry.

Leigh was also making the beauty pageant rounds at this point, with her construction crew buddies making up a vocal and rowdy cheering section when she competed. Eventually, she moved to Florida where she waitressed, bartended and became a bungee jumpmaster all while she sang in small bars and clubs.

A position at FedEx in Florida led to a transfer to Nashville, where Leigh abandoned package delivery for a waitressing job at the legendary Bluebird Cafe. There she met music publisher Michael Knox, which led to a publishing deal, demos and eventually her contract with Decca and her first album.

After she finished "29 Nights," Leigh returned to Virginia to do a small hometown show. Her high school guidance counselor was in attendance that evening and offered a very special message to Leigh.

"He came up to me and said, 'Forgive an old fool,'" Leigh remembers. "I said, 'You're crazy. There's nothing for me to forgive. I was never discouraged by what you'd said. It just kind of encouraged me to make it happen even more.' No one ever dissuaded me from singing, they were just in fear of something they didn't understand."

With all of the ups and downs and back and forth that Danni Leigh has experienced in her turbulent career to date, her concept of success has changed pretty drastically. She knows now what is important in her career and in her life.

"Prior to getting to Nashville, I always said that all I wanted was a record deal," says Leigh. "When I signed the first deal, I thought that was it. I'm going to be famous. Then all hell broke loose. That rug got yanked out from underneath me so many times, I walk around rugs now."

"But success has changed for me. The way my career has gone, I know that I'm successful, and nobody can take that away from me. I don't need to be Garth Brooks. I need to be happy. I need to be able to make my music, and write songs and play guitar and make a living at it. Charlie Daniels told me that if you want a lifelong career at it, you've got to go out there and get the fans. They're not going to come to you, you've got to go get them. That's my focus this year. I want my songs played on small-town radio, and I want to got to my fans and touch their hands and play my music and make sure that I'm able to do this the rest of my life."