Life After Q Starts With an R, as in <i> Relaxation</i> : Songwriter: With years of hard road life behind him, Al Anderson kicks back and enjoys success in the country market.

Al Anderson seems to have more contenders in the running these days than the Kentucky Derby has racehorses.

Speaking over the phone recently from his home in Windsor, Conn., Anderson started rattling off the names of songs he has written that are being grabbed up by the country market.

There’s the new Carlene Carter single, “Something Already Gone,” which is featured on the “Maverick” film soundtrack. There’s Hal Ketchum’s “(Tonight We Just Might) Fall in Love Again,” which is also moving up the country singles chart. Anderson also ticked off recent recordings by Sammy Kershaw, Alabama and the Mavericks.

For 22 years, slogging it out on the hard road he plied with NRBQ was pretty much Anderson’s only way to get his music heard. Now he can sit home and lead the comparatively leisurely life of a songsmith who makes monthly trips to Nashville to work with an assortment of writing partners.

Success in the country market paved his way out of his long-held guitar-playing slot in NRBQ, a gig that Anderson said had grown “really stale.”

“It was getting old to me,” he said of NRBQ’s never-ending round of club dates. “I’d been dissatisfied with it for maybe four years, playing the same places. Month after month it would be the same thing, with the same songs, and it was starting to feel like a parody of a parody. I could take it better when I was drunk.”

Anderson says he quit drinking three years ago, a change he says that has helped spur a fertile streak as a songwriter. His first taste of success came last year, when he wrote “Every Little Thing” with Carlene Carter and the song reached No. 2 on the country singles chart.

Meanwhile, Anderson was having his creative differences with the other members of NRBQ. Two of his songs made it onto the band’s new album, “Message for the Mess Age,” but another that he had submitted, “You Better Look Out,” got turned down.

“That just pushed me over the top” in deciding to quit, he said. “I don’t look at it as a bad thing, but as a fortunate thing. I’m vastly more successful, both financially and spiritually. I’m a happy guy.”

Anderson said he gave his notice moments after playing a New York City club show with NRBQ on New Year’s Eve. He said he told NRBQ’s bassist, Joey Spampinato, that he was leaving the band, but would continue to play shows through June if the other members wanted him to stay on while they toured to promote the “Mess Age” album.

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Anderson said he never heard back from NRBQ, which soon replaced him with Spampinato’s brother, Johnny.

“There’s no hard feelings,” Anderson said, noting that NRBQ’s manager has talked about setting up a farewell concert for him, something he would like to do. “It was a great band before I got there, and it’ll be great after. It was a great school, but it was time for me to get my degree and get out.”

Anderson has been playing in Carter’s touring band (a show a few months ago at the Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana revealed that the hulking guitarist, known as “Big Al,” had slimmed his customary girth considerably). He also is working on songs for the second solo album of his career--the first was his 1988 release, “Party Favors.”

Anderson said he will play scattered concerts in which he presents his songs in a stripped-down solo or duo format, including a show June 10 at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica.

Is he planning to start a new touring band of his own?

“I’m not even slightly interested,” said Anderson, who can now afford to sit back and let some of country music’s top horses do the running around for him.