"It was a funny show," says Laura Veirs, but she isn't exactly laughing. Veirs is describing the tour stop her band made recently in Oklahoma City.

"It was kind of like an old juke joint vibe," she recalls of The Blue Door. "Sort of old roadhouse, sort of folky, but it smelled really bad and was kind of trashy at the same time. There were only 10 people there, but they stood right up front, whooping and hollering after every song, and we played really well. It was one of our most positive shows, actually."

Any touring musician can appreciate Veirs' sanguine attitude toward the performance; sometimes it's the nights when no one shows up that prove to be the most rewarding. Sometimes. Unfortunately, the attendance thus far on Veirs' first U.S. tour has been sparse. "It's pretty hard," she explains, "since no one's heard of us. The press was a little hard to get rolling, too, because my CD came out kind of suddenly, without a lot of lead time."

The glaring irony of this last statement is worth pausing over. The CD Veirs mentioned, the stunning Carbon Glacier, was recorded in July of 2003, and was released not long after by Bella Union, the UK label that had released her previous record, Troubled by the Fire, to massive acclaim and strong sales all across Europe, where Veirs has toured extensively for the past couple of years. Despite a devoted international audience (and the towering beauty of her music) Laura Veirs couldn't get a record out in her own country.

"It was a hilly ride," she admits. "I was like, 'Of course no one wants to put it out: It sucks!' And then, alternately, 'No, wait: It's awesome!'" Slowly, a handful of NW independent labels, including Kill Rock Stars, Barsuk, and Hush, began to express interest in releasing Carbon Glacier, without any conclusive results. Then a chance encounter with the head of Nonesuch, the Warner Bros. imprint that has made a name for itself by putting major label muscle behind eccentric artists (Magnetic Fields, Wilco, et al.), landed the orphaned album an impressive home.

"All I've been doing is just going where the energy is," she explains. "It was like, 'Well, they're really into it in Europe, so let's go over there!' Five times this year, and each time it's been wonderful. It was just magical."

That magic consisted of sold-out shows all through France, England, and Switzerland, "people lining up around the block, and just going nuts. I'm not talking like huge rooms, you know, but still. It was so consistent, and it helped us feel like that was how it was going to be. And then we went to Hoboken for our first show in the States and there were 13 people there, including the other band, our band, our roadie, and the sound guy. It was a good wake-up call. We have a lot of work to do."

Laura Veirs moved to Seattle in 1997, after having attended college in Minnesota, where she studied geology and Chinese and played in a punk band. Ensconced in Seattle's Ballard-centric folk scene, she discovered, via the portal of Gillian Welch, a passion for the music of Mississippi John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotton, and a host of blues forebears whose sparse arrangements became a major influence on Veirs' solo songwriting efforts. Carbon Glacier is the third LP she's made with local genius producer Tucker Martine that mines these influences, and the most successful at infusing her own quiet naturalism into the mix.

"I was trying to break from traditional structures," she says of the process that led to the album, "but still draw from my love of old folk and blues music." The result is a staggeringly beautiful record that is as chilling as an icebound stream, and as personal as a private thought. Whether or not it will find the audience it deserves is a question that Veirs herself seems content to leave open for now.

"I'm not, like, gloriously ambitious," she says. "I guess I'm ambiguously ambitious; I don't know what I want to do with my life. I want to make another good record. That's about as far as I'm seeing it right now. I'd love to be able to sustain my life through music making, but I don't know how long that can happen. Right now, it's happening and I'm pretty excited about it."

sean@thestranger.com