OK, here’s some big news for fans of country-folk singer Iris DeMent. Her people report that she’s hard at work, writing songs for a new album that’s slated for 2010 release — and that she’s finished almost enough songs to go into the studio. “She wants to write three more before she feels she’s ready to record,” relayed her agent, Mitch Drosin.

Why is this big news? Because it’s been 13 years since DeMent’s last album of new material.

The recording career of DeMent, a brilliant songwriter and heart-fluttering singer, can be split into two phases. From her ’92 debut through the late ‘90s, she recorded three albums of her own, all of which won raves from critics and made her a beloved figure on the country-folk scene, and then did several duets with John Prine on his “In Spite of Themselves” disc in 1999.

Those albums, and her live shows, won her loads of acclaim from fans and critics alike, due to the purity of her vocals and her pristine, mountain-music approach to country and folk styles. Some called her the greatest female country singer to come along in decades. And her songs were full of emotive, heart-tugging detail — and, sometimes, righteous anger.

But DeMent, who comes to The Ark on Friday, hit a rough patch in the late '90s. She went through a divorce, which triggered a period of depression. And, at roughly the same time, her songwriting muse understandably slowed. She did release a disc of gospel covers in ’04, “Lifeline,” wherein she revived many of the songs she remembered hearing as a child, growing up in a Pentecostal family — even though she herself had left the church when she was a teenager.

But even though her recording career shifted into a low gear, her personal life has been full of great emotional riches during the last several years. She emerged from her depression, got married to the great singer-songwriter Greg Brown in 2002 — and in 2004, they adopted a girl from Serbia, who was 5 years old at the time.

So, for the last several years, DeMent has spent more time tending to home and hearth than she’s spent on the concert circuit. Friday’s Ark date is her first since ’07, and only her third since '02. Prior to that ’07 show, I interviewed her for The Ann Arbor News, and at the time, she spoke openly about her songwriting muse seemingly, suddenly, eluding her — but was emphatic that she did not like the term “writer’s block.” She confided that songs had always come slow to her, even when she was starting out.

“I can remember being six or eight years old, sitting at the piano for hours, waiting for songs to come, and I didn’t end up writing my first song until I was 25,” she said at the time. “So songs haven’t always come to me on my own clock, or when I wanted them to.

“But I’ve gotten past the point where I don’t value myself or my worth in the world based on how much I have produced,” she continued. “That was a big hurdle for me to get over, and I’m kind of amazed that I did. But when I feel like there’s something I need to communicate to someone else — and that music is the way to do that — that’s what gets me to write.

“And I still sit there at the piano, and wait for the songs to come to me, and I have written some, but not enough to put out a record I would be happy with,” she said, revealing her high standards. “But I still feel very strongly that the music wants to come through me. I haven’t lost that desire.”

Given the news that she now has a new batch she’s happy with, that patience, desire and dedication to her craft have evidently paid off — and is a testimony to old-fashioned tenacity and resilience.

But the songs from those three brilliant ‘90s albums were so strong, and packed with so much emotional punch — and she has always sung them with such conviction — that she could just cull 90 minutes worth of songs from those three discs and still make her fans swoon.

Part of it, of course, is that voice, a retro-wonderful warble that is shot through with traditional gospel, bluegrass and folk influences. Indeed, the aching, plaintive quality of DeMent's vocals do conjure the high-country purity of the Carter Family, Hazel Dickens and other seminal country artists of the 1920s and '30s. And her songs from the ‘90s still speak with more emotional honesty and plainspoken eloquence than the music of any country-folk artist since ... well, since Prine's heart-rending releases of the early '70s.

You might say that DeMent came by her lonesome-country-gospel sound naturally. She was born in Arkansas, but when she was just 3, her family moved to California after their farm failed. But her Pentecostal parents were steeped in the country, gospel and folk music of the South, so at times it seems that DeMent’s heart-rending vocals seem like they almost stem from ancestral memory. And her songs overflow with the yearning and hopefulness of the gospel hymns she sang as a child.

DeMent has confirmed that, when she was growing up, “I was around singers: my parents, their friends, my family members — who would dig down, and go as far down as you can, and let it all come out — and my mother was one of those kinds of singers.

The rustic, unadorned production of DeMent’s ’90s records were also part of their appeal. When DeMent's 1992 debut, "Infamous Angel," was released, her simple melodies and the naturalism of her voice were much-needed antidotes to the paint-by-numbers bilge being churned out by the Nashville majors. And they still are, these many years later.

On "Infamous Angel" and on her 1994 follow-up, "My Life," DeMent's musings on mortality, family, lost love and spiritual conflict were rendered on churchy piano, sighing dobros, melancholy fiddle and plucky mandolin. Those musical treatments were still prominent on DeMent's1996 release, "The Way I Should," but she also broadened her palette to include electric guitars and keyboards - especially on the rousing and anthemic "Wasteland of the Free."

As scathing social critiques go, that song — in this critic’s opinion — surpasses Bruce Springsteen's "Born In the USA" and Neil Young's "Rockin' In the Free World."

In fact, she caught enormous heat from the right-wing for that song, given its critique of the U.S.’s military incursions into the Middle East and its skewering of politicians for doing the bidding of corporations in exchange for campaign contributions.

So here’s hoping she breaks out that one at Friday’s show.

Kevin Ransom is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.

PREVIEW
Iris DeMent
Who: Acclaimed, beloved country-gospel-folk singer/songwriter.
What: Emotive, probing songs, sung in a high-lonesome voice.
Where: The Ark, 316 S. Main.
When: Friday, 8 p.m.
How much: $30
Details: 734-761-1451 or The Ark web site.