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Sara Evans is hoping three is a charm. For the third time in her 26 years, this Missouri farm girl has come here chasing her dream: to become a country music star. * Evans is one of thousands seeking just part of a business worth more than $2.5 billion a year, and her struggle to make it as a singer of traditional country music -- distinctive sound rich with lyrics about love and romance, loss and hurt -- tells a story about the state of the music itself, and the town that has been its home since the mid-1920s.

In this era when Garth Brooks has become the most successful solo artist in history, many on Music Row -- the few blocks of bungalows and low-slung offices that are home to Nashville's music publishing companies, recording studios, and record labels -- seem to be grappling like never before with the question that has vexed this industry for years: how to broaden the market for country music without abandoning its classic style. It seems as though the answer to this question will determine both the success of artists such as Sara Evans, as well as the larger issue of what role Nashville plays in the entertainment industry.

Evans has in fact come a long way toward her dream. In late 1996, she landed a deal with RCA Records -- the prestigious label that was once a launching pad and home for country giants such as Eddy Arnold, Jim Reeves, Willie Nelson, and Dolly Parton -- and her debut album, Three Chords and the Truth, was released to critical acclaim last fall.

Newsweek called her a "new Patsy Cline" with a "distinctive sassiness." Entertainment Weekly ranked her in the same league with Loretta Lynn and Patty Loveless. Billboard called her a "considerable country talent" who "invites favorable comparisons to the best country divas." One single from Evans' album did crack the Top 40 country charts, but almost five months after the album's release, it has yet to get airplay in major radio markets -- the critical factor in the success of a record. Having sold slightly more than 20,000 copies, she is still a long way from the 80,000 industry experts say is necessary to break even in today's business.

But Evans remains doggedly optimistic. "God put me on this earth to be a singer. It's what I love to do more than anything, and I'm going to make it." She and her six brothers and sisters grew up on a farm outside New Franklin, Missouri, where the family raised corn, beans, tobacco, and livestock for a living. "We were a very poor farm family." From an early age, Evans' grandfather taught her all about Nashville's "Grand Ole Opry," the longest-running live musical radio program in the world, and the legends who decorated its stage.

By the time she was four, Evans and her brothers would travel on weekends and during the summers as the Evans Family Band, performing gospel and bluegrass music at festivals and church revivals. Renamed the Sara Evans Show once the talent of its youngest member became evident, they were eventually pulling in $50 per performer each night. This augmented a rural family income so paltry that Evans' mother once traded firewood for Levi's so her children would have Christmas presents.

Evans first traveled to Nashville when she was 11. Her father accompanied her so she could record a single, "What Does a Nice Girl Do in the Meantime?" and on its flip side, "I'm Going to Be the Only Female Fiddle Player in Charlie Daniels' Band." It didn't exactly crack the Billboard charts. But her dream never died, and her next foray to town, after high school and a short try at college, was part of a more calculated plan to break into the business. "I skipped college, and had no other aspirations but to sing" Evans says. "So I came here with my older brother, started waiting tables at the Holiday Inn on Briley Parkway, and tried to meet whomever I could."

The person who made the most lasting impression was Craig Schleske, a musician from Oregon and now her husband. "He was a room service waiter, in town with his brothers, trying to do the same thing. We started dating, fell in love, and he asked me to go to Oregon with him and sing in his band."

Evans spent the next three years with them in the Pacific Northwest, opening for the likes of Willie Nelson, Tim McGraw, and Clay Walker. But even though she was performing six nights a week, and making good money, Evans still felt she was a million miles away from the only place her dream could happen. She had matured, and longed to return to Nashville, determined to finally break into the music business.

During Evans' absence, Nashville had continued in its on-again, off-again transition from traditional country to pop, accelerated by the 1990 debut of Garth Brooks. Traditional country -- characterized by fiddles, mandolins, and rhythm instruments like an acoustic guitar and bass -- had begun to take a back seat to a more neutral, almost pop music sound that used rock-and-roll production elements. It had certainly come a long way from the early 1960s, when Willie Nelson was trying to break into the business as a songwriter. "If a song had more than three chords in it, there was a good chance it wouldn't be called country, and there was no way you could make a record in Nashville that wasn't called country at that time," he once said. "I had problems with my song `Crazy' because it had four or five chords in it, Not that `Crazy' is real complicated; it just wasn't your basic three-chord country hillbilly song."

And the artists were changing, too. Mary-Chapin Carpenter seemed to represent this new trend in progressive female country artists. The daughter of a publishing executive, Carpenter was raised in Princeton, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., and sported an Ivy League education. Then there was k.d. lang, who also broke into the country scene during this period. lang was different. She became known as much for her duets with Roy Orbison, Loretta Lynn, and Kitty Wells as she did for denouncing meat-eating and publicly declaring herself a lesbian. These women were definite departures from someone such as that "First Lady of Country Music," Tammy Wynette, who before stardom in the late 1960s, had worked as a cotton picker, hairdresser, and waitress. For many Americans, Wynette and her classics "Stand By Your Man" and "D-I-V-O-R-C-E," with conservative, anti-feminist themes, symbolized the material coming out of Nashville. By the time of Evans' return in late 1995, more than the sound and the major players had changed. The business had also become much more profitable.

Country music had finally surpassed both pop and urban contemporary formats as the number-one music choice behind rock. Between 1994 and 1995, the Recording Industry Association of America certified that close to 300 albums had sold enough copies to qualify as either gold (500,000) or platinum (1,000,000) records, the highest numbers this town had ever seen. Revenues had exceeded the $1 billion mark, up from $724 million in 1990.

Sara Evans had always preferred the traditional country style, and in fact once said she had grown to "detest country pop" but was nevertheless encouraged by the changes in Nashville. She returned just when it seemed as though an artist cut from the fabric of traditional country music might again have a shot at taking hold. "It was like, Oh! A country singer! No one was used to that," says Evans.

Wasting no time, she sought out entertainment lawyer Brenner Van Meter for advice. It just so happened that Van Meter was considering leaving her legal practice to manage talent. Recognizing Evans' obvious abilities as both a singer and songwriter, and sensing the appeal of an artist who had actually lived a gritty country existence and performed that sort of music, Van Meter arranged for Evans to meet her husband, an executive at the Sony Tree Publishing Co.

Through her introduction to John Van Meter, Evans found work recording songs that writers would then submit to major artists as potential album cuts. In no time, she was in demand as established songwriters sought her out to give their material a test run.

When the Van Meters heard that veteran songwriter Harlan Howard wanted to pitch his 1964 classic, "I've Got a Tiger By the Tail" (which he had written with Buck Owens, who subsequently recorded it) to a female star, they immediately thought Evans' voice and approach would be precisely the style needed to convince a major artist to record it; so they invited Howard to the recording session.

"I went in, sang the song, came out of the singing booth, and there's Harlan Howard on the couch," remembers Evans. "He said, `Are you that little girl in there singing? You're great. I've been looking for you for years to sing my music. I can't believe how country you are.' I had never even thought about it before. Now it's a big thing, Sara Evans is so country and so traditional."