Deana Carter’s extraordinary path

“Ordinary,” a new song by Deana Carter, goes a long way toward explaining why the spunky Nashville singer-songwriter never totally fulfilled the commercial promise of her arrival a decade ago.

As she sang it this week at the Key Club midway through a loose but hard-hitting 90-minute show, “Ordinary” sounded -- even more than the title song from her new “The Story of My Life” album -- like her personal manifesto:

I love to cross the line

Oh wouldn’t it be scary

To be just ordinary

Carter has little to fear. Ordinary she’s not.

That was abundantly clear at the show, her first with a new six-piece band that had rehearsed for just two days.

Closing in on 40, she has the same willowy and girlish Southern belle voice that turned the sweetly nostalgic “Strawberry Wine” into a No. 1 country hit in 1996 and helped her debut album, “Did I Shave My Legs for This?,” sell 3.3 million copies. She also still exudes the infectious optimism that infused that album, even though just two albums later her sales had plummeted to 82,000.

She can strum an acoustic guitar gently, sing deftly observed ballads of love lost or thrown away, then turn around, strap on a Fender Stratocaster and wield it with a rock swagger that would do Keith Richards proud. And she repeatedly coaxed her new band mates into extended instrumental excursions that were part Allman Brothers, part Pink Floyd (whose name was emblazoned in gold glitter lettering on her shirt), part Crazy Horse.

She often flashed a perfect porcelain smile framed by dimples that threatened to take over her face until bumping into cheekbones that glow like ripe strawberries. The former blond has let her elbow length hair go back to its natural reddish-brown color.

The unapologetically charming bundle of contradictions that is Deana Carter is at the heart of both her music and her fitful relationship with the music business in the 13 years since signing her first record company deal.

Artistically and commercially, “Did I Shave ... “ quickly established Carter as a potent singer and songwriter. But between a corporate shuffle at the label and her musical shift to more of a rock-pop sound, her second album, “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright” (1998), sold barely a tenth of what her debut did. So Capitol let her go.

She signed with Arista Nashville for her third album, “I’m Just a Girl” (2003), but that sold just 82,000 copies in the U.S., and the label decided not to renew her contract.

After that, the daughter of veteran Nashville session guitarist Fred Carter Jr. -- who named her after his friend, Dean Martin -- said she was written off by executives at several other record labels.

“They were telling me things like I can’t write, I can’t sing, I’m out of touch with what audiences want to hear. Man, that was rough,” she said, her blue-gray eyes nonetheless sparkling as she sat in her dressing room earlier in the day after taping a performance for CBS-TV’s “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson.”

Eventually she found her way to Santa Monica-based Vanguard Records, part of a family of labels that includes such critically respected but commercially limited musicians as Dolly Parton, John Hiatt and Mindy Smith.

Vanguard wanted Carter, a label spokeswoman said, because executives like her maverick sensibility and artistic honesty. “We signed her,” Vanguard’s publicity director Lellie Capwell said, “so she could make the kind of record she wanted to make.”

That was just what Carter wanted to hear, and she made the most of the offer.

“They didn’t hear a note of this record until it was done,” said Carter, who not only sang and wrote or co-wrote all 11 songs on the album, but also produced it and played virtually all the instruments.

“When we had the record listening party at the label,” she recalled, “they brought in all this food and beer, and I suddenly got really nervous. I wondered, ‘What if they hate it?’ ”

Her fears proved groundless. “The Story of My Life” has gotten enthusiastic reviews not only from Vanguard staffers but in the music press for its emotional and musical range.

The leadoff track, “The Girl You Left Me For,” examines a woman’s fruitless desire to win back a lover who’s moved on, its naked vulnerability emerging from a muscular rock vibe akin to some of Alanis Morissette’s and Sheryl Crow’s better songs. “Katie” is a winsome paean to women who can combine youthful innocence while exuding adult strength. “Sunny Day” reveals her steadfast refusal to yield to what she sees as a societal culture of fear.

She moved here nearly five years ago after divorcing songwriter Chris DiCroce, ending their five-year marriage. After her contract with Capitol Nashville ran out, a rocky transition to California also included her arrest for speeding and failing a field sobriety test when visiting her family in Nashville for Christmas in 2001.

She thought things were looking up when she was signed by Arista Nashville, put out “I’m Just a Girl” and landed an opening slot on Kenny Chesney’s 2003 tour. But it was the day she arrived home from that trek, which she considered her best tour yet, that her manager told her Arista had decided to drop her.

She decided to forge ahead on her own, working as a self-contained songwriter, singer, instrumentalist and producer. She co-produced all her previous albums as well, the result of an osmotic education in the recording process from years spent “as an itty bitty girl” watching her father in the studio with the likes of Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.

A friendship with independent filmmaker Chris Hicky, whose “Blue Horses” screened at last summer’s Las Vegas Film Festival, turned romantic toward the end of 2003, and Carter unexpectedly got pregnant.

Their baby, Gray Hayes Hicky, was born last September, and they’re now engaged. Hicky documented the pregnancy and birth on film and turned it into a segment of the CMT cable channel’s “In the Moment” documentary series that aired in December.

Carter knows the road she’s taken is hardly the most conventional or the easiest path to musical success. But she takes pride in one thing: At least she isn’t ordinary.