Country comeback

Usually, whenever LeAnn Rimes is on TV, she’s got a microphone in her hand. One day last fall, however, she was holding a plate of Tony’s Quick Sauce No. 2. Rimes was one of the featured guests on “The Tony Danza Show,” a daily talk show hosted by the former “Who’s the Boss?” and “Taxi” actor.

After some light chitchat – and Danza plugging Rimes’ latest projects, a children’s book and a Christmas album – they whipped up the pasta sauce.

Then they broke out in song, reading from cue cards: “Baby, can’t you see how much I care, for your tomato marin-air?”

This is what you do when your career is on a ledge, when you’re trying to re-establish yourself, when you’re trying to polish the tarnish off your star. You eat from the plate of opportunities handed to you.

That’s why Rimes agreed to host the new season of “Nashville Star,” the country music “American Idol,” which starts March 1.

That’s why having lunch with her is part of the grand prize of a new horse-racing reality show called “American Dream Derby.”

And that’s why she licked the spoon coated in Danza’s sauce. In her eyes, these aren’t B-list gigs; they’re ways of getting her name back out there.

On Tuesday, Rimes released the most important album in her controversy-dotted, wildly successful, twisting road of a career.

“This Woman” is her much-lauded return to country music, her remarriage to the genre after she briefly divorced it just three years ago for a fling with pop music – and the pop culturisms that went along with it, like posing topless for the cover of Blender magazine.

Country music, however, can be reluctant to let artists back in after they stray. Shania Twain and Faith Hill, though both hugely successful, are often labeled traitors – by music critics, by longtime fans – for leaving behind the genre that gave them their start.

Rimes suffered similar criticisms, not to mention several years’ worth of unrelated headaches that found her spending more time in the courtroom than on the stage. Meanwhile, she was growing up, trying to, like all teens, find herself.

Now, at age 22, she says she has. Gone are her legal problems, she says, sealed up, shelved and either forgotten or forgiven. And she’s gotten married, having found true love in the arms of one of her dancers, Dean Sheremet. All she wants to do now, she says, is get back to singing country music.

The question is: Will country music have her back?

“LeAnn Rimes is a country artist who decided to try her bid at crossing over into pop. That’s the rite of youth,” says Dann Huff, the well-known producer (Faith Hill, Michael Jackson and Madonna) who worked on “This Woman.”

“In doing so, she mucked up her relationship with country,” Huff says. “The tendency of country music is, unfortunately, ‘If you stay the same, we’ll accept you. If you get outside our box, we’ll stab you to death.’ “

For the past few years, Rimes has done one seemingly strange thing after another, from releasing an all-pop record, “Twisted Angel,” to putting out over-the-top, overtly sensual music videos, to packing up and moving to L.A., leaving her Southern roots in the dust.

All this followed her initial burst of success: A No. 1 hit, “Blue,” at age 13; Grammys at age 14 for Best New Artist (the first country singer to win in that category) and Best Female Country Vocal Performance; and, also at age 14, more than 12 million records sold.

“Everyone around here loved her,” says Johnnie High, who gave Rimes her start at his Johnnie High Country Music Revue in Arlington, Texas, back when she was about 7.

“But watching her do all those things in L.A., it was kinda like watching one of your kids writing on the sidewalk,” he says. “You shake your head, criticize them and wanna give ‘em a spanking.

“But at her age … I think everybody understood it’s a growing-up thing. It’s a kid thing. You just think to yourself, ‘This, too, shall pass.’ “

For a kid, Rimes was making some heavy decisions, including signing on dotted lines to take three parties to court. She went after former bodyguard Robert Lavetta for blackmail; her label for an “unfair” record deal; and, shockingly, her own father, Wilbur Rimes, for “gross mismanagement.”

At the time, she claimed her dad and his Dallas business partner, Lyle Walker, had stolen at least $7 million from her by charging exorbitant fees.

“For a long time, there was a real danger that her litigation threatened to overshadow her music,” says Phyllis Stark, the Nashville bureau chief for Billboard music magazine. “I have a folder in my office that’s as thick as my arm, full of copies of all her court papers. A lot of people began to wonder if she was going to derail herself and her career. It’s hard to concentrate on your next album when you’re in court all the time.”

The album that came out amid and in the aftermath of all her courtroom drama was 2002’s “Twisted Angel,” her foray into pop music.

Although just a few years earlier Rimes had enormous success with the pop single “How Do I Live” – which spent a record 69 consecutive weeks in the No. 1 slot on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart – “Angel” barely flew, selling a little more than 500,000 copies.

Despite the disappointing sales figures, Rimes says she has no regrets about making a steel-guitar-free pop album.

“I love everything I’ve ever done,” she says. “I’ve gotten grilled a lot about that album. You know, people just didn’t want me to experiment. When you’re a teenager growing up, you learn a lot about yourself, and that’s what I did with my music.

“I did something different, something that not a lot of people expected me to do. And that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re a kid, find yourself, find what works for you. And, in a lot of ways, that did work for me. It was a great learning experience. So, nope, no regrets whatsoever.”

One might see Rimes’ return to country music as a way back to the gold mine she dug with her debut, “Blue.” But she, and others associated with the disc, insist that’s not the case.

“If she had sold 50 million copies of ‘Twisted Angel,’ yes, this conversation may not be taking place,” says producer Huff. “But I think it goes deeper. The truth is, in her roots, she’s very country, and she wants to re-establish her ties with country music.

“This is who she is. This is her core audience. She has tasted everything and decided this is what she likes best. She doesn’t seem to be influenced by anything but her own gut instincts. Believe me, she’s not hurting for money.”

Adds Benson Curb, vice president of sales for Rimes’ label, Curb Records: “This record is indicative of where she is as an artist and a person. It’s reflective of where she is in her life right now.”

That would be living in Nashville, happily, with her husband and seven dogs. The lawsuits have been settled. She and her father, who lives close by, have reconciled. She’s developing more, she says, as a singer and writer; as she points out, she wrote or co-wrote a handful of the songs on “This Woman.”

“I do think I am growing more as a writer,” Rimes says. “And there’s a very cool energy to this record, I think, because of that. It’s absolutely country, but it’s my kind of country. I would get bored if I didn’t play around with stuff.

“It has a modern twist to it. I still want to attract a younger audience,” she says. “But there’s also stuff on it for my older fans who liked ‘Blue.’ I was really inspired by a lot of old-school country rock and blues. I was listening to a lot of Janis Joplin, when music was music.

“It’s not overproduced, I’m not hiding behind anything. To me, it’s the most personal album I’ve done.”

The first single, “Nothin’ Bout Love Makes Sense,” sits at No. 7 on Billboard’s country music singles chart – the first time in four years Rimes has had a Top 10 country single.

“She’s off to the right start,” says Chris Huff, music director for the Dallas-Fort Worth country station KSCS-FM.

“We haven’t heard any resistance from our audience saying, ‘Hey, she went pop, why are you playing her?’ I’m sure there are a few out there, but our audience just wants to hear good country music.”