Young mothers who are high school dropouts often evoke images of a hard life filled with meager earnings and little chance of advancement.

Stereotypically, they are expected to be found at home, pulling in welfare checks or maybe working at the local Piggly Wiggly. Rarely do people expect these women to be a successful musician.

Enter Stacey Earle. She’s a hard-working, honest mother and wife. And at the age of 40, she has her own record label – Gearle Records and has already sold more than 20,000 copies of her debut album, “Simple Gearle.” Her newly released sophomore effort, “Dancing With Them That Brung Me,” is close to surpassing that number.

So how did she get here, and what took so long?

“I’m a late bloomer in the music industry. I got a late start,” she says from a Holiday Inn somewhere in the Midwest. “I was a mother at 17, so I didn’t even dream like some people dream of being in the music business.”

Instead, her dreams included having food in the cupboard for her children. After all, she was only a baby raising babies.

Since she has persevered in the music business for 11 years now, some people may think it was Earle’s strong Southern work ethic that led her this far.

However, Earle tries to stray away from that cliche, claiming it was really her situation that spurred her to persevere.

“Being a young mother, I had to make something happen everyday in order to keep the lights on,” Earle says.

In fact, her motto is, “Make something happen everyday,” and that’s exactly what she did when she moved to Nashville, Tenn. from San Antonio, Tx. so she could better market herself.

Earle was raised on different types of music that greatly influenced her style. Her parents loved musicals and traditional country, her brothers – including the famed Steve Earle – loved the the Beatles and Jon Fogerty, and she liked a lot of Motown – so it is no surprise that a lot of these genres scrambled together to help invent her sound.

“I don’t claim to be folk. I wouldn’t insult the folk artists and folk audience,” she says. “I don’t claim to be pop . and I don’t claim to be solid country. I wouldn’t insult country. I just call it Stacey Earle music.”

Yet “Stacey Earle Music” didn’t quite catch on at first, mainly because Earle wasn’t being true to herself and her work. She wrote what she thought the people wanted, but later found her audience was more taken with the songs she’d been writing over breakfast at the kitchen table.

The songs spawned not only a successful debut album, but also a rewarding tour that had her playing an astounding 274 dates last year.

This led to some attention by a few major labels, but, not surprisingly, Earle turned them down.

“At that point I said `No, thank you,’ because I knew they couldn’t take care of it like I did,” she said.

In order for Earle to take care of her own work, she wants to keep herself independent as long as she is willing and able. This tactic has often been used by folk artists, including Joan Baez, whom Earle is set to begin touring with this weekend.

However, playing innumerable shows while lugging around boxes of CDs can be overwhelming, and Earle does admit she gets worn out.

“There’s days I get tired and I say, `Oh major label, take me away,’ kind of like Calgon,” she says, referring to an old TV commercial. “But also there’s another part of me that says they can’t take care of it like I can. They become a part of you, these CDs.”

It appears Earle has a cynical attitude towards major labels, especially those in based in Nashville. However, she feels she has good reason to feel the way she does.

“They’ve kind of nailed themselves up against the wall,” she says. “They started messing with the pop market. They’re losing their identity as country.”

Despite country artists claiming they need to grow, Earle shoots back that they’re not even singing about what country is supposed to be about.

Stacey Earle says she knows what her songs are supposed to be about. She keeps them positive – sometimes poetic – but always honest. Because of this, she finds people will relate to her better.

She wants to share a part of herself that others in her situation might not be willing to reveal. Earle believes some young mother out there might find a sense of hope in her music.

“Some people keep diaries and journals,” Earle says. “I write songs.”