Whitney Duncan photo by Jeff Lipsky, courtesy of Warner Bros. Nashville.

It finds Whitney celebrating love, and its innocence, in "Skinny Dippin," new, in the steamy "Kinda Crazy," and well established, in the joyfully sensual "Fireflies"; chronicling love's failure in the self-assured "When I Said I Would" and the moody "Burn It Down"; and doing justice both to pure sass, in "The Bed That You Made," and to the raw pathos of "God Close Your Eyes." With the title song, Whitney and co-writers Shanks and James perfectly encapsulate the roses-from-thorns dynamic that infuses both the relationship in the song and the musical rebirth Whitney has experienced.

"I've been down a few wrong roads musically," she says, "but it all feels right now--the right writers, the right songs, the right producers, the right team--the right road. It's really the perfect title for this record."

Through it all, Whitney displays the maturity and self-assurance of a woman who has found her voice, something that has come after a lifelong journey. She was born in Scotts Hill, Tennessee, a town of about 900--"There was just one four-way stop," she says. Her father is a state environmentalist and her mother a schoolteacher. It was her grandfather, though, who helped introduce her to music.

"I was a grandaddy's girl," she says. "I remember being at their house when I was four or five, sitting in front of the TV watching Elvis videos with him. I knew when I first watched Elvis, 'That's what I want to do!"

She had the talent to go with the drive, and after gaining confidence by performing for her family she began singing in church. Soon, she was performing at fairs and festivals.

"I dragged my parents everywhere, every weekend almost," she says. "There was always a strawberry festival or a barbecue festival, and we would take trips to Kentucky, Missouri, and wherever else I could for a chance to perform."

Whitney sang at school events, including both her kindergarten and eighth-grade graduations, placed third in an all-age talent competition at Loretta Lynn's Ranch in Hurricane Mills, and got the chance to sing with a group of promising singers her vocal coach worked with, both at Euro Disney and at Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral. Then, in her early teens, she began traveling to Nashville.

"I played at Tootsie's a few times when I was 13 or so," she says. "I remember I couldn't stay around because of my age, but I loved being on that stage."

Someone who heard her sing at a competition offered to put together a three-song demo for them for what she and her parents considered a great deal of money. Her vocal coach recommended a Nashville attorney, who said, "Don't do it. There are other ways to go about it." He became a mentor and Whitney began traveling back and forth to Nashville to write songs. She set aside sports--she was a talented softball player who had been pitching for her high school team in eighth grade--as she began concentrating more on music.

"My father, who had to be at work by 8:00, would get up really early to take me halfway to Nashville to meet my manager, who took me the rest of the way in," she says. That changed when she got her own driver's license, although, she says, "They still took me in when they could--I wasn't that great a driver!"