Jo Dee Messina photo courtesy of jodeemessina.com.

Jo Dee Messina titled her last album Delicious Surprise. The follow-up took a surprising turn of events, though it’s been anything but delicious from her perspective.

She’s set April 27 as the release date for the new CD, Unmistakable Love, which comes almost exactly five years after the April 26, 2005, release of Delicious Surprise.

Why such a long wait? It wasn’t by choice. Jo Dee’s been at odds with Curb Records over the project for much of the last three years.

“The first single ["Biker Chick"] came out in 2007, and the album was supposed to come out in August,” she told The Maryville Daily Times of East Tennessee. “Then it was bumped to October, then moved to the next year and then moved to the next summer. At that point, it was ready and supposed to come out for three or four years. We were just going back and forth with attorneys, and it was just such a hopeless time. I was running out of money fighting these battles, and it was just to get my music heard. It was heartbreaking.”

Delicious Surprise went gold in less than five months on the strength of her No. 1 single “My Give A Damn’s Busted.” Her give a damn was apparently tested, though, by the wait for Surprise. Tours and touring prices are often tied to album release dates. Jo Dee kept telling promoters she had an album coming and was embarrassed each time around when the date got moved.

“If you look at my records, they’re so far apart, it’s been hard to gain momentum each time. I feel really discouraged sometimes, because so many fans are out there who want to hear it, and that’s all that I want,” she said.

Disputes between artists and record labels are nothing new. Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw, LeAnn Rimes and Waylon Jennings are just some of the acts whose disputes with the companies that distribute their music became a matter of public record.

A Curb representative declined the opportunity to respond to Jo Dee’s comments.

Meanwhile, some of her fans were so outraged that they planned a demonstration at Curb’s Nashville offices during the CMA Music Festival last June. Jo Dee talked them out of it — she didn’t think that was in her best interest — but the next month, the hopelessness of the situation gave way to inspiration.

“I was frustrated and really down, but just when you feel like God’s looking the other way, that’s when He shows you that He’s right here,” she said. “It was in the middle of July, and we were out West when I looked over and saw these beautiful snow-capped mountains. We stopped and I got out, and I was in shorts and a tank top, and it was just so beautiful.”

The scene inspired her to write “That’s God,” her latest single. It’s one of several songs that she’s recorded and added to the album since the skirmish with Curb began. She’s now viewing it as a positive result from what seemed to be a negative situation.

“Ultimately,” she said, “the purpose was to just get this message out and sing this song.”

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