‘I Always Thought I Was Too Logical . . . to Be a Singer’

Trisha Yearwood isn’t the biggest-selling female artist in country music, and she’s not the most critically acclaimed, but none of her peers can claim a more impressive combination of numbers and respect than the 31-year-old Georgia native.

Yearwood, who will present a Christmas-tinged show Saturday and Sunday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, hit it big in 1991 with her debut single, “She’s in Love With the Boy,” and was considered a potential pop-country crossover queen when her “Hearts in Armor” album, featuring the Don Henley-assisted “Walkaway Joe,” came out in 1992.

Instead, Yearwood has settled into a less spectacular career trajectory, with a focus on longevity and substance. And she’s well-prepared to conduct it: She’s one of the few country artists to hold a college degree, from the music business program at Nashville’s Belmont University.

Yearwood, who is married to the Mavericks’ bassist, Robert Reynolds, spoke this week by phone from her tour bus in Oregon.

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Question: Did you study the music business in college so you could be an executive, or did you want to be a performer?

Answer: I’ve always wanted to be a singer. I’ve never wanted to do anything else. But I do a lot of business as a singer, so I wanted to learn as much about the business I was gonna be in as possible. I’m a corporation. I have employees and I have a lot of decisions I have to make on a daily basis that have nothing to do with that 90 minutes I spend onstage. Luckily, when I get to go onstage I can forget about all that.

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Q: Do you have an aptitude for the business?

A: I’m a control freak by nature, so if I was bagging groceries I would be the head bagger and I would be telling everybody else how to bag groceries. . . . My nature is I want to know exactly what’s going on. I’m a banker’s daughter, so I’ve been able to balance my checkbook since I was 5. . . .

In fact, I always thought I was too logical and normal to be a singer. But I think I can separate those things. I think what the music allows me to do is be adventurous. Through my music I think I’m allowed to go there, when in real life I don’t really do that.

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Q: Do female artists have equal treatment and respect in Nashville?

A: I don’t feel any kind of discrimination. I know that there was and I know that there still is. But that’s certainly not unique to the music industry. . . . In some ways it’s easier to be a female artist in this business because there are so many men. If you think about the top women in country music, nobody looks the same, nobody sounds the same. In some ways I think it’s easier to be more yourself and more unique as a woman.

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Q: Linda Ronstadt is one of your chief influences, and some of your albums are closer in spirit to hers than to standard country records. Do you want to be a presence in pop as well as country?

A: I’m not striving to be a pop artist. Pop 20 years ago was Linda Ronstadt, but pop today is Janet Jackson and Nirvana. I’m not anywhere near trying to compete with that. But I do think I can sing more than one thing, and I like for there to be that diversity within one album. I really like to find songs that I can’t imagine 10 other country artists doing.

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Q: There were a lot of expectations for a big breakthrough after “Hearts in Armor” in 1992, but your sales have remained fairly steady. Are you satisfied with the progress of your career?

A: If I look at selling a million records pretty much guaranteed every time I release an album, that feels very successful to me. I think what happened was, with the success of “She’s in Love With the Boy,” my record label was almost like, “OK, you’re gonna sell 2 million records out of the box on this next record.” So you’re set up to fail. But I think what happened was that over the course of five albums I’ve stayed at a level that is more realistic.

I also think that my record label probably thought that “She’s in Love With the Boy” was such a mainstream record that I was gonna be a lot more mainstream than I am. Even though I work successfully in the mainstream of country music, not all my records are mainstream. But I’m sitting in a place that makes me very happy. I’m not slouching at all sales-wise, but yet I’m making records that [let me] sleep at night and not feel I have to apologize to Emmylou Harris. She’s the integrity police to me.

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Q: Would you make a record as radical and experimental as her recent “Wrecking Ball” album?

A: Sure, yeah. I look at her career as the model. Her sales have been up and down, she’s not always been the hottest female artist on the planet, but I think she’s consistently made records she can be proud of. I think she’s had a career that I respect wholeheartedly. She’s earned the right to record whatever she wants to. She’s built a following that will buy whatever she puts out. I’d like to be that kind of artist.

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Q: How do you see the current state of country music? What encourages you, what bothers you?

A: It is discouraging for me to see artists like Emmylou, and some of the older artists who I think have made great records--Waylon Jennings’ new album that Don Was produced I thought was a great record--not get any recognition. Even Willie Nelson doesn’t get played on radio that much. George Jones, who I think is a better singer today than he was 30 years ago, doesn’t get played on the radio. That’s discouraging for me.

But I have to believe that it will be better for country music once it starts to slow down a little bit. Once country music starts to settle back in a little bit and it’s not this huge thing, I think that the cream will eventually rise to the top.

* Trisha Yearwood performs Saturday and Sunday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos, 8 p.m. Sold out. (310) 916-8500.