Chicago is seldom, if ever, regarded as a country town. But over the past decade, the Windy City's reputation for producing exciting alternative country music has flourished. Nearly every night, fans pack Chicago's mid-sized venues to see locally based acts such as The Waco Brothers and Kelly Hogan play country tunes among the concrete jungles of America's Second City.

Front and center among Chicago's hidden musical jewels is Anna Fermin's Trigger Gospel, whose unique brand of eclectic-country-pop has been wowing local audiences for more than seven years.

Fermin, who just released a new album, is a unique character in the world of country music for many reasons. At first glance, Fermin, 33, stands out among her peers because of her ethnicity - she was born in the Philippines and is one of the few Asian-Americans active in country music.

Fermin's family immigrated to the states when she was an infant in search of greater educational and employment opportunities. Rather than heading to an intimidating American metropolis, her father chose to settle the family one hour north of Chicago in the working-class town of Kenosha, Wisc.

"He thought Chicago was this big, dirty city, and he was having a hard time finding a job. He went up to Kenosha and had better luck there," Fermin explains via cell phone while driving back to Wisconsin for the holidays. "It never really felt awkward being an immigrant or Filipino. I felt like a normal kid growing up in the Midwest. But it was normal for me to eat weird Filipino food and attend Filipino functions. I never felt at a disadvantage."

While growing up in Wisconsin, the Fermin house always seemed to be filled with music. Mom and Dad were into classic country artists such as Patsy Cline and early Elvis while young Fermin devoured Top 40 radio hits including David Bowie and Duran Duran. She channeled much of her free time and energy into studying classical piano, violin and voice.

"As a typical teenager, I hated piano lessons. I was taking them because my mom and dad made me," Fermin recalls. "My dad had a karaoke machine. I'd do Bette Midler or Whitney Houston. I never thought I had much of a singing voice at all. It was never anything I really took seriously."

Her eclectic musical upbringing shines through on the new album from Anna Fermin's Trigger Gospel entitled "Oh, The Stories We Hold." The long-awaited disc showcases 11 country-pop numbers drawing from the very stories that have made Fermin's life so interesting thus far.

It was a long road between piano lessons in Wisconsin and the production of the new LP.

Fermin left home at age 18 to study visual arts in Chicago. "My parents are very old-school, so they wanted me to stay at home and be a doctor or a nurse or a lawyer or a teacher. But I was more inclined toward art," Fermin explains. "I wanted to go to the Art Institute of Chicago, and the only way I could convince them to send me was to promise that I would go into graphic design because it would be a lucrative business - something I could go into later."

Shortly after her graduation, Fermin began to think about expressing herself in terms of music. For this epiphany, she has two people to thank: a long-defunct boyfriend and Steve Earle.

"I was serenaded by an old boyfriend to a Steve Earle song called 'Down The Road,' and it blew me away," says Fermin of her inspiration. "I was so moved by the song, and all of the emotions surrounding it, I decided that I needed to learn how to do that. I just wanted to learn how to convey that kind of emotion. I wanted to learn how to play guitar, so I could sing him a song. I didn't know how to play guitar, so I borrowed an old classical guitar and taught myself how to play."

Shortly thereafter, Fermin wrote her first song, "August Moon," a country ballad that she began playing at various Chicago open mics and with her first band, Anaboy.

Before dissolving, Anaboy developed a small local following in Chicago with the apex being a slot opening for Texas singer-songwriter Jo Carol Pierce (ex-wife of Jimmie Dale Gilmore).

Anaboy dissolved in 1996, and Fermin began piecing together a new group from accomplished Chicago musicians who were also between bands. Her new, unnamed band had been rehearsing and playing informal gigs around Chicago for about three months when she got the call that changed everything: an opportunity to open for Johnny Cash at Chicago's House of Blues. But first, the band needed a name. Fermin, a collector of antiquarian books, owned a rare edition of a 1935 novel by Henry Sinclair Drago entitled Trigger Gospel. Needing a band name in anticipation of the Johnny Cash gig and the pending release of a five-song EP, Fermin reached for her bookshelf and pulled down the beautiful Drago book. Thus, Anna Fermin's Trigger Gospel was born.

The Johnny Cash opening slot provided mass exposure to Chicago's growing country music community. "It was an amazing gig," Fermin remembers. "I was extremely nervous. It was a sold out show in front of the biggest audience we had ever played. Johnny was very sweet to me, and he complimented me on my voice." The crowd gobbled up copies of Fermin's EP and future Trigger Gospel gigs became more and more crowded. It was time to start thinking about a full-length studio album.

At the time, Fermin's manager happened to be friends with Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely and Butch Hancock. After meeting Fermin in Austin, they referred her to the prolific producer Lloyd Maines (father of Dixie Chick, Natalie Maines) for assistance on the production Trigger Gospel's forthcoming disc.

Maines went to see the band play at the South By Southwest festival, and immediately agreed to produce the 1999 debut LP, "Things Change."

Fermin says recording under the direction of Maines was a complete pleasure. "Lloyd is like your favorite uncle. He's really easy to get along with. He's got no ego whatsoever. He's not one to do a lot of manipulating with arrangements or instrumentation. He just took what we had and made it sound the best," she says. The self-released disc featured what was to become Fermin's signature song, "Northern Lights," as well as a beautiful cover of the oft-recorded Latin number, "Beseme Mucho."

Hard work and relentless touring resulted in debut album sales exceeding 6,000 copies, a respectable figure in the world of do-it-yourself music.

Too eclectic for mainstream country distribution and not raw enough for the logical alt.-country indies, Anna Fermin's Trigger Gospel existed for four years in a musical no-man's land that made it hard to find a label to call home for a follow-up album.

A sizable gap between discs might have been a death sentence for lesser bands, but Trigger Gospel had a loyal following willing to wait for a new CD and attend live shows whenever possible.

In order to assuage her antsy fan base, Fermin self-released "Live Music Volume One," recorded in 2002 at the famed Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. It's one of those live albums that capture lightning in a bottle by catching band members performing at the top of their game. The disc includes perfect recordings of songs from "Things Change" including "Cry" and "Polite Conversations" as well as a cover of Richard Thompson's "Beat The Retreat."

In 2003, Fermin developed a business relationship with Undertow Records, a small, but respected, indie label who expressed an interest in releasing Trigger Gospel's second studio recording.

The boss at Undertow also managed Jay Bennett, who was striking out on his own after a particularly ugly and well-documented musical divorce from former Wilco band mate, Jeff Tweedy.

The timing was perfect, and Bennett was chosen to produce the follow-up to "Things Change."

"We decided to work with Jay because we felt he would be able to help us take the music to a different level," Fermin explains. "We knew that he was hands-on, very creative and would have a lot of input as far as the songs' arrangements."

The band found Bennett's style to be in sharp contrast to the laid-back manner of their first producer, Lloyd Maines.

"Jay is a genius bordering on madman," Fermin confides. "He's manic in his work ethic. We were recording things in elevators, in the bathroom, in back rooms, in the kitchen. It was an incredible experience in that we got more out of it than we expected."

The resulting album is rooted in a lush country sound with diverse influences including Latin, jazz, pop and rock. Call it Americana from a U.S. immigrant's worldview.

Fermin's emotionally-derived lyrics more often than not arise from recalling bad break-ups with historical boyfriends (see "Baby Won't You Please Come Home" and "Dragging On"), a trend that hopefully ended with her June 2003 wedding. From the opening lover's lament, "Are You Gonna Miss Me Too?" to the album's love letter to Chicago, "My Town," Fermin emotes with the voice of an angel and the composition skills of a seasoned pro. Her background as a visual artist shines through on the poetic musical painting, "White Birch," written while staring at birch trees swaying in the wind in Stevens Point, Wisc.

The disc also features two covers, a playful version of "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" (originally made famous by Doris Day) and a recording of Steve Earle's "Down The Road," the tune that inspired Fermin to pick up a guitar in the first place

. And the future?

Anna Fermin's Trigger Gospel is putting together a U.S. tour in support of the new music. Although the album is a celebration of American music, Fermin has used a spate of recent concerts to introduce country music fans to a bit of Filipino culture. She was able to obtain opening slots for other Filipino-American performers at a recent show.

"I was amazed that there were other Filipinos out there who are poets and jazz musicians who are forging their way. It was just cool to be able to highlight them as well," Fermin says with appropriate pride.

Another recent concert featured an unusual opening act - a buffet of traditional Filipino cuisine. "I never really paid attention to it until now when people make a point that I am Filipino. I've been more active now than I ever have been before in my adult life in acknowledging that I come from this colorful culture. I'm really proud to be part of that Asian-American community. It's kinda cool to see that there are Asians who are moving forward in the arts aside from just being medical professionals."