Carrie Underwood just won the Grammy for best female country vocal performance.

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• Who: Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood
• Where: Roanoke Civic Center
• When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
• Tickets: $73.50 and $65.50
• Call: 853-5483 or tickets.com

Carrie's favorites

Listen for these songs, which Carrie Underwood says are among her favorites to perform live:

• "So Small": "Because it's a really personal song for me. I get to get up onstage and sing these words, this song I helped create. It was my first No. 1 as a writer. I just love the song, and mean every word that I say."
• "Before He Cheats": "That one’s really fun for me, because I get to see the fans get really really excited."
• "Jesus Take the Wheel": "It’s my first song off the first album, and that one will always be really special to me. But it's all fun."

Try to imagine Carrie Underwood's hit song, "Before He Cheats," as a dance remix.

Underwood couldn't. She wouldn't -- even though her producers liked the idea.

"I had to beg and plead, and finally put my foot down and not do it," Underwood said during a late-January phone interview.

That was well before Feb. 10, when she performed a mildly-remixed version on the Grammy Awards, then took home a couple of Grammys for the original cut. She won best female country vocal performance, and "Before He Cheats" won best country song.

Just another stop on the road to superstardom for Underwood, who will be at the Roanoke Civic Center on Saturday, opening for Keith Urban.

She's the rare "American Idol" -- she won season four -- who has sustained success beyond the dreaded "sophomore jinx." Another former "American Idol" winner, Kelly Clarkson, famously struggled with producer Clive Davis for more control over her songs, then released a CD that bombed. Underwood said she and her team from 19 Entertainment and Arista Nashville have not disagreed much.

"I honestly think I've been really lucky in that respect, in that I haven't had to fight too many battles," she said. "Everybody, thus far, has been on the same page."

There are no guarantees

Same page, different page, it doesn't matter if you can't sell records -- and the list of failed "Idol" winners is getting longer. Taylor Hicks and Ruben Studdard have lost their record deals. Latest winner Jordin Sparks' debut peaked at No. 10 before diving deep below the top 20.

Meanwhile, check out Underwood's resume. Her debut album, "Some Hearts," has sold 6 million records in the United States, making it the best-selling female country CD of 2005 through 2007. She scored big with the singles "Jesus Take The Wheel" and "Before He Cheats."

"Carnival Ride" is her latest record, released in October. It reached No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart, and has sold 2 million copies. "So Small," her fourth No. 1 hit, is the first on which she shares writing credit.

"Being on the show and everything is not a guarantee that you're going to be super-successful your entire life. There's a lot of factors that go into it, and one of those is luck," Underwood said, laughing a little bit, maybe at her own fortune so far. "The person who wins can get out there and work extremely hard, and maybe it doesn't happen."

Still, success today means something different than it did even 10 years ago, Underwood said. Name recognition and plenty of fans don't guarantee record sales anymore. CD sales are down in the Web era, and she is well aware of it. But she's confident in her management and record label team. She says they're going in the right direction.

"The main thing to remember is nobody knows what's going to do well," she said, adding that labels overlook acts that become famous from their myspace.com presence.

"Nobody knows exactly what the people are going to like and what the people are going to want," she said.

It helps if you're willing to take chances. "Before He Cheats" was truly a stretch for the young woman from tiny Checotah, Okla. Hearing the song in demo-tape form was intimidating, she said.

"When I first heard the demo, I knew I loved the song, but I didn't know if I could pull this off," she said. "People think, Carrie is all, she's sweet, curly blonde hair. ... But we decided to go for it, and it turned out really well."

The song was a crossover success, billboard.com charts show. It was downloaded at least 2 million times, the first country song to hit that mark, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

Time for fame, laundry

For at least the past few years, what people have wanted is plenty of pop music sprinkled on their country. Artists including Underwood and Urban have benefited. But Underwood, 24, points out that there's still plenty of room for more traditional artists, such as Alan Jackson and George Strait.

"It's an interesting time," she said. "There are different kinds of country. I think they all go together to make a really awesome genre. ... It's a really cool time to be in country music."

So, what can folks expect on this tour of pop-country hitmakers?

"Keith and I are a good mix," she said. "He's obviously extremely talented and plays guitar like no other."

As for her set: "It's on a lot bigger scale than anything I've ever done before," she said. "It's a lot more headliner-ish, if I may say so. A lot more screens. A lot more lights. It's just bigger."

The Roanoke show could have been a homecoming of sorts for two members of her band -- Ashley and Austin Clark of Franklin County.

Ashley Clark, a singer, guitarist and fiddler, was an original member of Underwood's touring band. Austin, a dobro player and singer, had just taken the gig when they decided to team with Clark brother Adam to participate in another Fox show, "The Next Great American Band." The Clark Brothers won the show, and Underwood lost a couple of sidemen whom she liked a lot.

She said she's confident for them as they move through the process of recording with 19 Entertainment, the same company that runs "American Idol."

"Fortunately for them, they are getting to work with a lot of people that I worked with in the beginning ... so they're in good hands," she said.

The Urban/Underwood tour runs through June, with plenty of breaks for Underwood to get back to Nashville a couple of days a month. That's a good thing, because otherwise the laundry would not get done, she said.

"It's just really hard when you have to stop by a laundromat to do your laundry," she said. "I don't like other people doing my laundry. It kinda creeps me out [she laughs], like, now I know someone else is washing my undergarments. So it's like, crap! I've got to go find a laundromat and sit in there for a couple of hours. It's the little things like that.

"It's nice to have the comforts of home."