Pop undercurrent runs through Evans’ album

Tom Gardner

Friday, Dec. 8, 2000 | 10:26 a.m.

Who: Sara Evans

When: 8 and 10:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Blue Note Las Vegas

Tickets: $32.18

Information: Call 862-8307

You can't fit the word "sad" and Sara Evans into the same sentence unless you're talking about one of her few somber songs.

"I'm so happy about everything, it's hard to describe," Evans said in a phone interview from her home in Nashville, Tenn. "Having a baby just changed everything."

Yes, Evans, who performs Saturday at the Blue Note Las Vegas, is a mom. Her son, Avery Jack Shelske, was born on Aug. 21, 1999.

Avery is one reason it took Evans so long to release her third album "Born to Fly" (RCA). The CD recently arrived in stores, 18 months after the title single from her "No Place That Far" album went gold.

"Now I just look at singing as something that I get to do that's a blessing, that I get to do for fun," she said, "but it's not the most important thing to me. I finally realized my calling in life, and that is to be a mother."

Another reason for the gap between albums: Evans is a perfectionist.

"We went into the studio with it in January and worked on it until May nonstop. I really, really took my time. I decided I'm not going to come out with anything until I sound the best that I can and this is the best record that we can possibly make," she said.

Meanwhile Evans was working on another project.

"It was sort of brought on by the pregnancy," she said. "I had gained more weight than I wanted to with the baby and so I started losing the weight.

"There were two things I decided I wanted. I wanted long hair and I wanted to be skinny. So what if I am 29? I'm gonna go backwards. I've pretty much accomplished that."

She credits the Weigh Down Diet developed by fellow Tennessean Gwen Shamblin for the skinny part.

"I never eat until I'm hungry -- until my stomach's growling -- and I stop when I'm full. It's just the simplest thing in the world, and now I am like 25 pounds lighter than I was before I got pregnant. I'm down to a size 6."

Evans calls it the Christian diet because Shamblin, a practicing Christian, preaches that people aren't overweight because of what they eat but because they eat too much too often.

"God put everything on this Earth for us to enjoy, not to torture us. But God gave us a natural mechanism to tell when we need to eat and that's when we're growling," she said.

That sometimes gets her band growling because she doesn't like to stop her tour bus until she's hungry, and that keeps the boys in her entourage asking, "Are you growling yet?"

Fans get a chance to see the new, improved Evans in the video for "Born to Fly." Drawing from the opening phrase, "I've been tellin' my dreams to the scarecrow," she's Dorothy in a stylized "Wizard of Oz," dressed in a miniskirt and knotted calico shirt.

"I wanted the video to be colorful and (pause) sexy. I wanted to show my tummy in this video. I was always afraid to do that before," she said. "Definitely, this video is the farthest I've ever pushed it, but I felt really good about my body and I sort of wanted to kind of show it off a little bit."

She also shows off what she can do vocally on the new CD.

"Three Chords and the Truth," her first album, was traditional. Her second album, "No Place That Far," was a little more representative of her bluegrass-country upbringing -- with a hint of pop. There's a definite pop undercurrent running through all 11 tracks (six of them co-written by Evans) of her new album.

"The music is definitely more edgy and progressive than my previous recordings," she said, "but my voice is so country, there's just no way I could ever not sound country."

Background vocalists include two sisters, a sister-in-law and Avery. The baby gurgles contentedly at the beginning of the fourth cut. "That cracks me up," Evans is heard saying.