Bettye LaVette is seriously making up for lost time.

The 63-year-old soul singer, who cut her first single at age 16, flirted with fame over the years but only broke through with her 2005 album, I've Got My Own Hell to Raise, a collection of cover songs by such respected female artists as Lucinda Williams (Joy) and Sinead O'Connor (I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got).

But she's hardly resting on her newfound laurels.

The blunt-talking -- but funny -- LaVette doesn't mince words about her status in the music industry leading up to her concert at the Bathurst Street Theatre tonight.

"This isn't done yet," said LaVette, down the line from her house in West Orange, N.J. where she's lived for the past five years with her 55-year-old husband, Kevin Kiley, a record and antiques dealer who is also a singer and musician.

"Everybody does not know who I am. So nothing has really changed. It's just that I have the opportunity to go further ... I think if more people understood exactly how this worked they would keep their asses at home."

Still, LaVette is making inroads. Her most recent record, The Scene of the Crime, which came out last fall, was nominated for her first ever Grammy, for best contemporary blues album, although she lost to Eric Clapton.

"Yeah girl, you could have knocked me over with a feather," she said. "I have listened to them call those names for 47 years and then they said mine right there live with all the rest of them. (Now) I don't know how they came to the conclusion that Eric Clapton was the better rhythm and blues singer than me."

No matter, LaVette still managed to have a good time.

"We came back to the hotel and got really drunk," she said.

The Scene of the Crime finds the Detroit-raised LaVette in an unlikely pairing with the alt-country act The Drive By Truckers as her backup band at the hit-making FAME studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama -- where she recorded covers by Elton John (Talking Old Soldiers) and Willie Nelson (Somebody Pick Up My Pieces) among others.

"I didn't know whether or not it was going to work," LaVette said. "They acted much better than I did. I was the only one that was constantly hollering and getting upset. And then when I was screaming and hollering, everybody would do what I wanted to do, I'd be okay. I'd poke my mouth out and cry or get mad. It works!"

There's also the autobiographical tune, Before the Money Came (The Ballad of Bettye LaVette), which she co-wrote with Drive-By Truckers guitarist-vocalist and album co-producer Patterson Hood.

"He made me angry and I wrote it," LaVette said. "He kept bothering me and I kept telling him that I can't write or that I don't want to write -- so he just kind of got on my nerves. So I wrote the song to shut him up."

The new disc gets its title from the fact that LaVette recorded an album, Child of the Seventies, for Atlantic Records at the now defunct Muscle Shoals Sound Studios (co-owned by Hood's session bassist father David) in 1972 over five days, but the record didn't see the light of day until three decades later.

"I don't know that anybody knows what happened," LaVette said. "Most companies at that time, had what was called quality control, and I really just believe that in New York when they put my album up against whatever else was being tested that week, I failed the test. But I don't know that."

Hood has likened LaVette to a method actor when she sings in the studio.

"When I hear the music and I start to say the words, then I'm there, but I don't like to practise and I don't waste any time in the studio," she said. "I hate to record. It is so tedious and repetitive. I never record anything over three times. They're songs! My God! They aren't cures for cancer. How long does it take to put a song together? It's a song!"

Singing live absolutely remains LaVette's first love.

"That's kind of like getting drunk and getting up at a party or something," she said.

Better late than never for Bettye

Soul survivor Bettye LaVette had two choice gigs in Washington, D.C. recently.

First she brought down the house singing The Who's Love (Reign O'er Me) at the Kennedy Centre Honors on Dec. 6 in front of Pete Townshend and Roger Daltry -- who were among that night's honorees.

"They both came over to my table (afterwards) and Roger got down on one knee and told me that he loved it. And Peter came over and said I made him cry."

Then LaVette sang A Change is Gonna Come opposite Jon Bon Jovi at the Lincoln Memorial on Jan. 19 during the We Are One concert as part of Barack Obama's Inaugural celebrations.

"It was extremely exciting," LaVette said. "People don't realize that equally as important as Barack Obama becoming president, it was equally as important for me because that was the first time that everyone all over the world had seen me. So this was one of the greatest gifts I'd ever been given in my life. I'm standing there at the feet of Abraham Lincoln, looking at Barack Obama and everybody's looking at me. So it was three things that had never happened in my life."

Still to come is an April 4 all-star Transcendental Meditation benefit at Radio City Music Hall featuring Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Donovan, Eddie Vedder, Sheryl Crow, Moby, and others.

"The acoustics in Radio City Music Hall were one of the places I've wanted to hear my voice," LaVette said. "So I'm extremely excited about that. I feel like I should have been hobnobbing with these people all the time. I just feel like I'm late for the party."