Keeps Coming Back Till She Gets It Wright : Music: Michelle Wright, who plays the Crazy Horse tonight, is on her second go-round as a Nashville resident. Her determination paid off.

Three months after her first foray to Nashville more than a decade ago, country singer Michelle Wright packed up and drove home.

Raised in a tiny Canadian farming town--population 600--she had already hit the road with a band. But that hardly prepared the greenhorn for Music City Mecca.

“I knew no one and nothing,” she recalled, referring to the brutally competitive industry.

Still, the singer, who plays two shows at the Crazy Horse Steak House tonight, remained undaunted. In fact, she even wrote a song the night she returned, “I’ll Keep Reaching for the Stars.”

And today, while the stardom she enjoys in Canada still eludes her stateside, the husky-voiced singer has made the move back to Nashville, where she cut her 1992 hit, “Take It Like a Man.” The song earned the Academy of Country Music’s top new female vocalist award last year, and she has just released a new single. “One Good Man”--a longing-for-love ballad from her next album, “The Reasons Why,” due in September--”makes full use of her sultry, wide-ranging voice,” a Billboard critic writes in this week’s edition, “squeezing every last emotional drop from the lyric.”

During a recent telephone interview from home, the thirtysomething singer, on a break from an 18-month tour of Canada, Europe and United States, said she had no apprehension about returning to Nashville roughly three years ago.

“I knew this was a place I could come to do a lot of research and hang out with people whom I could learn from,” she said, “and that’s what’s happened.”

Wright, who has unconsciously added a touch of Southern twang to her subtle Canadian accent, follows pop chanteuse and compatriot k.d. lang south, but she said she feels no pressure to replicate lang’s widespread fame.

“She’s just been a great inspiration (whose success) indicated to me that it was possible. I thought, by God, I can do this too.”

The singer, who also plays acoustic rhythm guitar in her five-member band, made her stage debut at 5. She was following in the footsteps of her parents, who were country musicians as well as farmers in Merlin, Ontario, across from Detroit.

In her teens, she put together a garage band, which played country and ‘70s rock, and a week before her 20th birthday, after impressing an agent during a local gig, went on the road for the first time, touring Canada and the U.S.

Those salad days were free and reckless.

“We just had a blast, but it became apparent to me that the work had to be a bit more focused,” she said. “I had the vision, but I didn’t have the discipline.”

Determined to get the discipline, Wright signed in 1985 with manager Brian Ferriman, who remains with her today. Two years later, she got sober. (She once freely discussed her alcoholism, no secret within the industry back then, but now prefers to leave the past behind.) A year after that, she cut her first album, “Do Right By Me,” in Canada.

Not long after, the recognition began, especially around 1990, when she released the album “Michelle Wright.” The Canadian Country Music Assn. gave her album-of-the-year honors in 1991 and named her the year’s female vocalist in ‘90, ’91 and ’92.

But it wasn’t until “Now & Then,” which she recorded in 1992 after moving to Nashville--and trading big hair for a comely waifish cut--with her first major label, Arista Records, that she scored her first hits.

The album, which shows her blues, swing and rockabilly influences, made it to No. 20 on Billboard’s country chart that year, boosted by “Take It Like a Man” and “He Would Be Sixteen,” which brought tremendous fan response, Wright said. In the tear-jerker, a woman, haunted by her past, muses about the son she gave up for adoption.

“I’ve sat in the back of the (tour) bus and cried tears of pain and joy as I read all the letters regarding this song,” Wright said, adding that she has never been pregnant, but has known women who have had to face this situation.

Having that sort of understanding is a criteria she sets in choosing all her songs. She says she has complete control over her material, all but two of them penned by other writers.

Relating to the subject matter of a song she has written--such as “Where Do We Go From Here,” on her new album--requires no such secondhand empathy. It’s based on the recent breakup of her lengthy relationship with former band member, bass guitar player Joel Kane, she said, citing lyrics about two lovers’ questioning their compatibility:

“ It used to be so easy then We didn’t hold back anything Love was always sure to win, or so we both kept promising But how were we to know, once time had its say That we would come this close to losing our way, so where would we go from here .”

But personal change isn’t all Wright has on her mind. On a larger scale, she sees more success for more women in the business. Typically on any given week, the ratio of male-to-female country singers on the Billboard charts is about 5-to-1; Wright is optimistic that the right parts are in place to remedy that.

Last year, she appeared in “The Women of Country,” a televised special featuring Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn, among others. Such legends, she said, achieved great success in the business in the days when they trekked across the country--kids in tow--in their own rickety cars with trailers hitched to the rear, well before luxury tour buses.

If they can do it, certainly the current crop can continue the task.

“There have been strong, independent women in this industry for years,” Wright said, “so we’re not necessarily a new breed.”

At concerts where she shares the bill with male singers, audiences, she said, cheer just as hard for her as for anyone else, including a recent show in Fargo, N.D., in which the audience was loaded with girls and women singing along and yelling encouragement.

“It’s definitely going to be the decade of the female artist,” she said, “for women to break through and even the scale.”

* Michelle Wright performs at the Crazy Horse Steak House, 1580 Brookhollow Drive, Santa Ana. 7 and 10 p.m. $22.50. (714) 549-1512.