A Onetime ‘Jukebox’ Plugs Back Into Jazz : Pop music: Frustrated by the limited repertoire of the bar scene, singer Karen Gallinger is back on track with a brand-new act.

The life of an artist can be a roller-coaster ride of sweeping highs and barrel-bottom lows, and no one knows it any better than Karen Gallinger.

The 42-year-old singer appears to be heading back up toward one of those highs. She’s got a regular Friday night gig in Aliso Viejo, she’s thinking about forming a roadhouse band so she can sing the blues, and on Sunday she’ll get to sing her favorite music--straight-ahead jazz--when she appears at Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana.

But roll the clock back a year, and things definitely were not so upbeat. Gallinger, a native of Los Angeles who has lived in Orange County for more than a decade, had pretty much stopped singing and was working day jobs.

“For about 18 months, I worked maybe one, two, singing gigs a month, sometimes one every two months,” she said on the phone from her home in San Clemente. “Performing was becoming a painful experience, draining rather than fulfilling.”

The main problem was that she wanted to sing jazz and jazz-flavored material, but she was landing jobs that required her to sing pop and rock, mostly as an adjunct to drinking.

“I was a bar entertainer,” she said. “People weren’t listening as much as they were partying. And I was offended that people didn’t want to hear jazz and would be offended if I sang it. Being a jukebox was getting real tiresome for me.”

But it also was tiresome being the “secretary from hell, you know, typing, filing, offending people on the phone.” So when she was offered a steady gig at the Tivoli Terrace, on the grounds of the Festival of the Arts in Laguna Beach, she took it.

“It was a light-jazz job, sort of background to diners. It was the kind of job I hadn’t wanted to do before. But now that I was back on track, it was fine.”

She defines “back on track” as “being more accepting of who I am, more comfortable with myself, more comfortable with where my art takes me. I get more enjoyment out of life across the board. Before, I was way too thin-skinned, and a performer can’t be that way. The slightest thing would blow a fuse.”

Her recipe for resurgence was time away from her art, combined with therapy and medication that helped bring a sense of calm into her life. Now, she said, she feels ready to tackle many styles of music.

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At the Sports Tavern in Aliso Viejo, she does a variety of tunes, many pop-based, and plays guitar in what she reluctantly calls “a Bonnie Raitt style. But I don’t want to be compared with her. I don’t play as well as she does. I play rhythm guitar, not lead. But it’s rhythmic, funky, bluesy.”

At Rancho Santiago’s Phillips Hall, she will work with pianist Jack Reidling, bassist John B. Williams and drummer Joe LaBarbera. Reidling, LaBarbera and Tom Warrington joined her on her debut CD, “Live at the Jazz Bakery,” recorded last year in Culver City.

She thinks magic happened during the recording session, and she’s looking for it to strike again Sunday night. “Sometimes you get a combination of artists and everything really clicks. The wonderful thing about jazz is that you get to work in situations where there’s a good chance of that happening.”

* Karen Gallinger sings Sunday night at 7 in Phillips Hall, Rancho Santiago College, 17th and Bristol streets, Santa Ana. $8 general, $6 for seniors, children. (714) 564-5661.

She also sings Fridays from 8:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. at the Sports Tavern, 27822 Aliso Creek Road, Aliso Viejo. No cover, no minimum. (714) 362-5919.