LARSON: BEST NEW FEMALE STAR--AGAIN

“Would you like to see my collection of best new female vocalist awards?” asked Nicolette Larson. She ran to the entry of her Venice condominium to show off the plaques displayed alongside several gold albums.

“I’m the best new female vocalist in the world,” she said, laughing as she rattled off the titles she won when her debut album and single (the Neil Young-composed “Lotta Love”) made her the crown princess of California rock. Those awards are from 1979, but she also has another set of best new female vocalist commendations on display. They’re dated 1985, and they’re for country rather than pop.

At 33, Larson still looks girlish enough to be mistaken for a novice. She was asked for I.D. last week, she says, trying to buy beer. Still, she is amused by the irony that she would be hailed as a “new” artist twice, six years apart.

It’s not that she changed--music did. The California sound that ruled the airwaves in the late ‘70s died shortly after Larson’s initial success. Or, more accurately, it moved to Nashville, changed its name to country and didn’t give Larson its new address.

“Country music is almost what Southern California rock was--it really is. The Eagles today would be a country band,” noted Larson, who begins a five-month concert tour this weekend with shows tonight at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, Sunday at the Palomino and Monday at Oscar’s in Santa Barbara.

The change in music left Larson lost for several years, though she insists she wasn’t alone. “ Nobody knew what they were doing,” she said. “The whole world was lost.”

In 1983, though, she and her sound were reunited when she landed in Nashville as a member of the cast of the musical “Pump Boys and Dinettes.” (“It was an opportunity to go on stage without the pressure of ‘Macbeth,’ ” she said of her acting stint.)

“At that point I was approached by record companies saying, ‘You should record here,’ ” she recalled. But though she was uncomfortable with the direction rock had taken, she was uncertain about her potential in country. Despite having begun her singing career as a vocalist with Hoyt Axton and other country artists, Larson didn’t consider it her strong suit.

“Tony Brown (now her co-producer) said, ‘Well, you just don’t know what’s going on in country music,’ which was true,” she said. Soon, though, she discovered that much of country music was now virtually the same thing she’d been doing all along, and she signed a country contract with MCA.

Last year, Larson’s first Nashville album, “Say When,” produced three Top 40 country hits. A new album, “Rose of My Heart,” will be released next month.

Larson has not been totally accepted in Nashville, though. “I found people saying, ‘Are you going to “Juice Newton” on us?’ I say, ‘What’s that mean?’ And they go, ‘Well, Juice just used country to get to rock.’ They’re wary of pop people,” Larson said, adding that, indeed, her upcoming single will be marketed as adult contemporary pop as well as country.

The one thing she really dislikes about working in Nashville, though, is having to commute from her home. “It’s one of those things that really saps your energy,” she said, noting that the recording of her new album was particularly stressful when she suffered a miscarriage during it.

So why doesn’t she move to Nashville? For Larson, the bottom line is the coast line that stands just half a mile from her front door.

“I could move to Nashville, I suppose, but I really like Southern California. I grew up in Kansas City, and in Kansas City there’s no ocean.”