Cover Story

Issue date:
September 19-21, 1997

Deana Carter:
'Just don't quit'

That's her hard-won wisdom about success. A few years ago, Carter was cleaning bathrooms, her country music dreams deferred. Now she's poised to clean up at the CMA Awards.

On tour last month in Billings, Mont.

This week's awards Hosting the 31st Annual Country Music Association Awards (CBS, 8 p.m. ET Wednesday) for a sixth straight year is 17-time winner Vince Gill, up for two awards himself. Deana Carter will be omnipresent: She's nominated for the Horizon Award for career development and in the categories of female vocalist, album of the year (for Did I Shave My Legs for This? ), single of the year and music video of the year (both for Strawberry Wine). She's slated to perform, too -- barefoot, of course. LeAnn Rimes: A very good year Last year was teenager LeAnn Rimes' big debut at the Country Music Association Awards (Rimes on our cover last September). This year she's up for three CMA Awards as her first two albums continue to ride the charts. A third album, You Light Up My Life/Inspirational Songs, was released this month. A book by Rimes,15, Holiday in Your Heart, is due in November, and she'll star in the companion TV movie, scheduled to air on ABC in December.

She's an average Joe headed right for country superstardom. The 31-year-old singer-songwriter, whose debut album -- cheekily titled Did I Shave My Legs for This? -- has gone triple-platinum, is nominated for more of Wednesday's CMA Awards than any other female artist. Two singles from the album have gone to No. 1, including the achingly wistful Strawberry Wine. And Carter herself has become a full-fledged celebrity, right down to making People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" list.

It's a sweet feeling for someone who spent years scrubbing bathrooms and waiting tables while banging on doors in Nashville. "Getting here," Carter says, "was a fire inside that I couldn't put out."

n many ways, Carter is country's answer to rockers like Sheryl Crow and Jewel, who've managed to balance a sense of feminine empowerment with an endearingly vulnerable quality. She has the world-weariness of a traditional country diva tempered with a healthy dose of '90s feminism, a bit of out-and-out sex appeal and a sunny splash of Valley Girl perkiness.

Then there's Carter's sound: Her quirky, distinctively raspy voice is more Joni Mitchell than Reba McEntire, as if she came to Nashville by way of a folksy coffeehouse in Berkeley.

"In the climate of the teenage girl boom in country music, Deana Carter is definitely the big sister," says author Bruce Feiler, whose book about the country music industry, Dreaming Out Loud, is due next spring. "She has proved that the sort of powerful, sexy woman trend that Shania Twain started has legs. She's opened the door for a slightly older, more knowing tone to come out of women in Nashville."

Her song Did I Shave My Legs for This? (co-written with Rhonda Hart), for example, is a tongue-in-cheek rant at an unappreciative lover: I thought this new dress was a sure bet / For romance tonight / Well, it's perfectly clear / Between the TV and the beer / I won't get so much as a kiss.

"All those lyrics, I lived," Carter says. "I was with this person who ... didn't pay too much attention to me. Victoria's Secret, candles and food did not faze this man." The title "came about through girl talk. About how you feel when you've been rejected."

As for her biggest hit, Strawberry Wine (written by Matraca Berg and Gary Harrison), it's not her story, though it's close. The song tells of a girl losing her virginity on a riverbank at 17. Carter realizes some may disapprove of the theme, but says, "I fell in love with the song because it was honest. It wasn't preachy and it wasn't contrived. ... It's more a reminiscent reflection of firsts: puppy love, the first time you sneak a drink, the first time you stay out late and sneak in past your curfew."

And to set the record straight: "I didn't lose my virginity on a riverbank," although there was one on her grandparents' farm. "I made out like crazy [there]. I'd come home with chapped lips."

Carter walks a fine line between youthful freshness and grown-up cynicism. In her words: "I have a little experience, but I don't have kids yet, so I'm not an adult."

Carter's quirky voice is more Joni Mitchell than Reba McEntire.

But she's an utterly approachable almost-adult, radiating a low-key familiarity that instantly makes you want to grab some beers and girl talk. "Men are captivated, but women are not put off by her," says Renee Revett, program director of KXKC radio in Lafayette, La. "Women want to go shopping with her."

Don't look for her on Rodeo Drive or Fifth Avenue, though. She has a few designer duds but often takes the stage in nothing more glamorous than jeans and a T-shirt from Target. In an era when dressing stars for awards shows has become a cottage industry, Carter wore a $50 black halter dress to the People's Choice awards. And she steadfastly refuses to wear shoes while performing.

"I didn't start the barefoot thing as a gimmick at all," she insists, a tad defensively. "It's like when you go visit somebody at their home and they answer the door in their stocking feet. You just naturally feel a little more, like, chill."

nderneath Carter's easy-breezy exterior lies a hardened show-biz warrior. The daughter of respected session guitarist Fred Carter Jr. and his homemaker wife, Anna, Deana (named for Dean Martin, who recorded one of her father's songs, It Just Happened That Way) literally grew up in Nashville studios, where she met Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Levon Helm, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, among others.

Fred and Deana wrote songs together when she was 5, and now he couldn't be prouder of her. Asked if he would ever play in her band, Fred says, "I'd be her willing slave." (Younger brother Jeff does play guitar in her band; older brother Ronnie works for the state of Tennessee and heads Deana's fan club.)

After graduating from high school in Goodlettsville, Tenn., just outside Nashville, Carter and her father made the rounds shopping for a record deal. There were no takers, so she headed to the University of Tennessee and earned a degree in rehabilitation therapy. She gave the 9-to-5 world a whirl, then decided to take another shot at making it in music. So she worked on a demo tape and sang at small clubs -- and also waited tables, sold china, taught nursery school and scrubbed bathrooms.

She recalls a cleaning job at a Nashville video facility where she watched performers arrive for taping as she washed urinals. "I'm looking at these actors and actresses, going, 'I know at least one of them had a crappy job on the way up!' "

Her gamble appeared to have paid off when she was signed by renowned producer Jimmie Bowen of Liberty Records in 1991, but the label went through massive reorganizations and Bowen himself moved on. Carter spent five frustrating years orphaned in the shuffle. Her album was finally released last September by Capitol Nashville. Sales have now hit 3 million.

"The diagram of my life holds true to the story of the tortoise and the hare," Carter says now. "I've seen so many people be so successful ahead of me that I thought I'd never see the finish line. I honestly believe I'm the turtle finally making it across."

arter's breakout success is no surprise to longtime family friend Willie Nelson, who gave her one of her first breaks, performing at Farm Aid VII in 1994. "I knew if she ever got a shot she'd make it," he says. "There's just nothing not to like about her."

Nelson believes Carter's songwriting skills -- she co-wrote six songs on the album -- are her greatest strength and will give her the credibility and longevity she craves. "Songwriters are the backbone of the music industry. She'll always have a place in music."

And while Carter talks of soon bowing out to start a family with her husband of almost two years, musician Chris DiCroce, and jokes about how easy it would be to trade all her success to be "out there with my Weed Eater" working as a landscaper, she seems to know exactly what place she'd like to occupy in country music. "I just don't want to follow," she says, flashing her winning smile. "I want to lead."

Jennifer Mendelsohn, based in Washington, D.C., last wrote for USA WEEKEND about the pop group Hanson.

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