She That’s Got Is Getz : Her considerable skills have long been brewing in coffeehouses. Will her debut CD make her a star?

Coffeehouse culture may be hip nowadays, but it’s a kind of purgatory for any musician forced to compete for years on end with the cackle and hum of caffeinated conversation and the grind of the espresso machine.

Kerry Getz has been singing in coffeehouses in Orange County for 15 years, but she finally may have found her ticket out. Mundane as a career as “coffeehouse singer” may sound, there is something fairy tale-like in the story of how she came, after all those years, to release her first album.

She says that in the early 1990s, she fell under the spell of a record producer who controlled her like a dark wizard, while she sank into a dungeon-like state of mental entrapment. But she emerged at last to find what she calls “a fairy godbrother,” a wealthy businessman from Newport Beach who now is her financial backer.

Instead of returning at the end of her adventure with a Tolkien-like magic ring, Getz has emerged with a magical compact disc called “Apollo.” Its level of performance and songwriting artistry and its first-rate production values make it clear that Getz, at 36, is long overdue for deliverance from the coffeehouse grind, up to the national platform she deserves.

The daughter of a manufacturer whose company makes megaphones and pompoms for cheerleaders, Getz grew up in Newport Beach and turned to singing as a career after realizing she didn’t have the grades to be a veterinarian. At open-mike nights at Bilbo Baggins in Costa Mesa, she conquered her initial shyness and graduated to the local circuit of clubs and coffee shops.

Aside from a few forays elsewhere in Southern California, she has performed several nights a week on the local coffeehouse scene since 1982. By the mid-’80s, she had shown her potential by writing “Apollo,” a haunting, instantly memorable song in which she sadly yearns to escape everyday dreariness for a world of creative inspiration.

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In the early ‘90s, she thought that she had found a path out of the coffee shops. A small-time record producer with big plans and a well-equipped home recording studio in Sherman Oaks wanted to turn her into a star. She moved to Los Angeles County to work with him.

Getz admits that the 3 1/2-year chapter that followed was one of humiliation and loss of self. But recently, on the patio of a coffeehouse in Costa Mesa, she told the story without hesitation--speaking in a deep, breathy voice, with an openness that also is evident when she performs.

“I spent pretty much every waking hour almost being brainwashed by this guy,” she said. “It sounds ridiculous. It would make for a really, really bad movie of the week.”

She said that in her desire to make a record, she gradually ceded control of her life to her Svengali, who dictated how she ate and exercised, jealously limited her performing schedule and contacts with friends and put her through mind games and endurance tests in the recording studio in the name of eliciting an emotionally charged performance.

The recordings were very good, Getz says now, but her life was a wreck. Two very troubled songs on her “Apollo” album came out of the experience. “Let Me Out” depicts someone awash in suicidal thoughts and reaching for a reason to live. “Inhale,” a beautiful and deep song inspired partly by her only brother’s death from a drug overdose, captures a moment in which one becomes aware of, yet is unable to connect with, something very near yet infinite--something commonly called a soul.

“In that horrible period,” she said, “I felt there was nothing of me left, just this little part floating around that I couldn’t grasp.”

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Finally, in mid-1994, she broke through the chain of fears that had bound her to her manager/producer--which meant giving up on an unfinished project into which she says she had poured $28,000, part of it borrowed from her parents.

“She seemed like these cult victims I had read about, somebody who removes any reason to exist except to please this cult figure,” recalls Drayfus Grayson, a close friend who kept in periodic contact with Getz during her dark period and helped her pull out of it after she decided to sever ties with the producer. “She got some counseling, and she seemed to dust herself off, and I think [playing] music helped a lot.”

Getz says she came to realize that her loss of self stemmed from “a character flaw I had. . . . I would put other people’s opinions and decisions before mine. Even though this episode was horrific, I am grateful I went through it. There are lessons I needed to learn in a bad way.”

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She returned to Orange County in 1994, and her performances made it apparent that she had transformed herself from a talented but unfinished contender into a full-fledged artist, an undiscovered peer of the Shawn Colvins, Joan Osbornes and Sheryl Crows of the world.

“She seems like she has a certain depth now [that comes from] being bruised,” says Grayson, himself a talented songwriter. “She’s come a long way, but she’s had to go through some rough terrain to get there.”

Don Danks only had to see Getz perform once to know that he wanted to play a part in helping her reach beyond the coffeehouse scene.

At 39, he has made a fortune as a business executive and deal-maker and is president of Prosoft, a technology company in Santa Ana. To indulge the “frustrated musician” in him, Danks had opened Local Grounds, a coffeehouse in Corona del Mar.

Getz won him over instantly when she first played there about a year ago. “The coffeehouse circuit has some talented people, but she was head and shoulders above the rest,” Danks says. “I was blown away by the emotion she puts into a song, even when she’s playing before five people in a coffeehouse. Here you have a talented artist who needs a break to get her over the hump. I felt really compelled to help her produce [her album] the right way.”

Getz said that Danks put up $25,000 to record her album and manufacture a first pressing of 2,500 CDs. The clean, richly detailed sound of “Apollo” owes largely to contacts Getz made at Calvary Church Newport-Mesa, where she began performing 2 1/2 years ago in worship services that incorporate contemporary pop songs. Doug Doyle, the church’s sound engineer, produced the album, recording the basic instrumentation live in the church sanctuary and later dubbing in voices and instrumental solos at a studio in Costa Mesa.

Now Getz is faced with the arduous, long-shot mechanics of turning a custom recording into a national success. Danks says he will fund the album’s promotion.

“There are so many opportunities for people to do like [folk singer] Ani DiFranco has--release your own CD, get distribution and market yourself,” Getz said, hopefully. “There’s a big groundswell of musicians taking their music back” and not relying on record company promotion to be heard.

There also is a groundswell of popular chanteuses such as Alanis Morissette, Milla, Jewel and Poe, all young and gorgeous and about the age Getz was when she first stepped nervously up to an open mike.

“I’m very happy for and partly jealous of all the female songwriters who have gotten an album out in their early 20s,” Getz said. “But I’m also grateful that I didn’t. I’m happy with the way my writing has matured, and I’m much more confident with the place where I am now as a person.”

The place where Getz is now as a performer, barring further lucky breaks, remains your neighborhood coffeehouse. Fifteen years is a long, long time to have persevered in that purgatory.

“I just believe in what I’m doing,” she said. “I have faith enough in the talents that I’ve been given and the songs I’ve been able to write. I would like to be further on right now, but you need to be patient. And, one hopes, good things come to those who wait.”

* Kerry Getz plays tonight from 8 to 11 at Diedrich’s Coffee, 474 E. 17th St. Costa Mesa. (714) 646-0323.