Faith Hill: Off to an ‘Awesome’ Start : Pop Beat: During her first year, the country singer has already had two No. 1 hits. She performs with Alan Jackson tonight in Anaheim.

Ask country singer Faith Hill whether she’s ever been petrified during her dizzying ascent to stardom in the last year, and she starts rattling off a list.

“The first show I had with Reba; the first time I was on David Letterman; the CMA awards; the . . . “

But that same list leads her to conclude: “I’ve had a pretty awesome year. I don’t think it could have been any better myself.”

Perhaps not. The 27-year-old singer’s debut album, “Take Me as I Am,” released late last year, has yielded two No. 1 country hits. The first, “Wild One,” stayed at that pinnacle four weeks, matching a record for a new female artist set by Connie Smith in 1964. The second single was her two-step remake of “Piece of My Heart,” a tune last claimed by Janis Joplin in 1968.

Her album has gone gold and appears on its way to reaching platinum soon. She was nominated for a Country Music Assn. Horizon Award, recognizing new talent. She’s gotten to sing with George Jones and meet such other legends as Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn. She’s toured with her vocal idol, Reba McEntire, as well as Brooks & Dunn, and is now on the road with Alan Jackson, with whom she appears at The Pond of Anaheim tonight.

If that weren’t all nice enough, Hill was calling from a tour stop in Denver, having just had a day off in Aspen.

“We’re pretty much coming from paradise, but we’re excited to be coming out to Anaheim, though,” she declared.

Is this woman diplomatic or what?

She’s loving her tour with Jackson, who has penned a song for her that she plans to include on her sophomore album. She also loved touring with Brooks & Dunn, and certainly with McEntire.

“That was unbelievable for me. Can you imagine, getting to work with someone who was your hero? It was really a highlight of my career, by far.”

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It might seem a little strange for someone to be talking about her career highlights when she’s been in the business for, what, a year? But like many a star, Hill worked at it for years before finding success.

She fell in love with music in church, growing up in Star, Miss.

“I didn’t know I wanted to be an entertainer as a career. I just know that I loved to sing,” she said.

By the time she was in high school, she was singing at rodeos and other events. Then at 19, she moved to Nashville.

In many respects, Nashville is just a be-twanged version of Hollywood, where it seems every waiter and carhop is a star waiting to be discovered.

“There is a lot of that there, but there are some just normal people there too,” Hill asserted, with a laugh. “There are people who actually grew up in Nashville and just work there. But there are an awful lot of aspiring musicians, artists and songwriters in Nashville. It’s the place of dreams, just like Los Angeles.”

Hill found it hard for a would-be singer to land a day job.

“Employers didn’t take you quite as seriously” if you were a musician, she said. “I didn’t realize that at first. I went to several places for jobs and was turned away just for the fact of being honest and saying, ‘Of course, I moved here to be a singer.’

“That quickly changed. When I went to apply for a receptionist position at Gary Morris’ publishing company, I told them that I wasn’t in Nashville to be a singer, just to go to school and work as a receptionist. And I got the job.”

Though singer Morris wasn’t instrumental in furthering her career, Hill remains grateful to him.

“He gave me a job for 3 1/2 years, and he gave me advice, and he didn’t fire me when he did find out I’d come to Nashville for a singing career. To me, that kind of support is well needed as much as someone taking your tape to a record company.”

She was also fortunate in befriending hit Nashville singer-songwriter Gary Burr (who currently has his name on three charting country singles). He hired her as a singer in his band and used her to record demos. When she got signed by Warner Bros., some of the songs Hill brought to her sessions were Burr’s.

“He was basically responsible for getting me going in Nashville,” Hill said. “He’s the guy who heard me as a young teen-ager who had a lot of dreams. . . . He heard something there, I guess, and wanted to see what he could do to help me mature it and took me under his wing.”

She hasn’t been able to form as close a bond with the famous names she has worked with since, “simply because we’re all working all the time,” she said.

When growing up, she said, her vision of country stardom came mostly from movies and awards shows. “I had these pictures of it as a life of party , just partying all the time and playing music 24 hours a day, and then a life of limousines and nice clothes. Some of that is true, but the reality is we work our butts off, and it’s not all limousines and long, gorgeous dresses.”

Along with performing, Hill says she takes an active hand in every aspect of her career, from the finances to the tour routing. She’s not yet a millionaire, she says, and if she were, she probably wouldn’t get to act like one for some time.

“Everything I’ve made this year has gone right back to the road, back into my organization. I don’t have money to go spend like I’d want to, so I’m not at the point yet where I can go buy my mom and dad a new kitchen or my brother a new house or nothing like that, but I want to,” she said.

Recently she’s been busy selecting songs for her second album.

“I’m real excited about them. Hopefully you’ll be able to hear a bit of maturity, just because I’ve got one album under my belt and have been on the road all year. I can’t wait to go back in the studio.”

Along with the Jackson-penned tune, titled “I Can’t Do That Anymore,” there may be one of Hill’s own songs on the album, though she isn’t sure whether it will make the grade yet. She did co-write two of the songs on “Take Me as I Am.”

Like a great many other contemporary artists, she’s reliant on others to write the words she sings, and she’s aware of that dependency.

“I’m very thankful we have songwriters as good as we do, because that’s my livelihood too,” she said.

Curiously, her countrified version of “Piece of My Heart” was recorded without her ever having heard the famed Joplin rendition.

“If you listen to my version I think that’s real obvious,” she said. “I was pitched that song on a demo tape, by someone who had recorded it country. I didn’t even know another version existed. Isn’t that hysterical?”

Though Hill is from a photogenic generation of young country stars who have all but crowded older country legends off the charts, Hill evinces a fitting respect for her elders.

“For people who are younger than I am who have aspirations of being an artist someday, I really wish they would have the opportunity to know George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard and all the people we grew up listening to, and be familiar with that classic music we all grew up with,” she said.

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The constant in country music through the decades, she feels is, “it’s about real people, who experience real-life traumas and joys. It’s about real-life American people.”

It can be argued that the older generation of legendary hard-living country stars had more trauma and life experience to draw from than most of today’s performers, to which Hill responded: “I could agree with that somewhat.

“But I think there are people nowadays who are just as passionate about their music as Merle Haggard or Hank Williams, but maybe they view it from a different perspective than through the bottom of a bottle. You can’t take anything away from Garth Brooks, George Strait or Alan Jackson, who are just as passionate about what they do.

“And these are different times. Even looking at rock ‘n’ roll, you don’t see people acting like the Doors and Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and all those people. There’s only a few that still live that lifestyle, and there might be a few in country music that live that lifestyle.

“But you know the way you have to work these days and as competitive as it is, you have to stay healthy or you won’t be able to endure what you have to do on the road out here,” she said. “It’s a lot of work, and if you want to stay on top of things, you have to take care of yourself, just plain and simple.”

Hill’s singing has often been compared to that of her hero, McEntire, but Hill doesn’t necessarily hear that.

“She was a really big influence on me, but I don’t think I sound like her,” she said. “I don’t see a lot of comparison, unless you could say she’s a really smart, hard-working woman who knows what is going on in her life, and I hope that’s something somebody will be able to say about me in years to come.”

What does Hill think sets her apart from the thousands of other young hopefuls still knocking on Nashville’s door?

“I don’t really know what makes me different than everybody else. That’s a tough question,” she said. “I only can tell you that I really love what I do and I’ve always wanted to do this as long as I can remember, and it’s been a desire so strong that it has completely outweighed everything else in my life.”

* Alan Jackson and Faith Hill play tonight at The Pond of Anaheim, 2695 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim. 8 p.m. $22.50. (714) 704-2500.