The two kids who were kept at home from school with sore throats are fighting. The 7-month-old is crying. The phone is ringing.

"Hello," answers Martina McBride.

		Martina McBride Where: Petersen Events Center, Oakland When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday Tickets: $36.75-$49.75, 412-323-1919 Related coverage: Martina on Record

OK, so the McBride home outside of Nashville isn't quite a glamour scene from "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." But with a long string of hits and the perfect country soprano, the woman cradling a crying baby in one hand and the phone in the other certainly qualifies as both. It's a balancing act that McBride has learned to master, despite the pressures of maintaining her professional status and maintaining a family.

"I don't know if it's just kind of going with the flow, but you make it all ... Excuse me," she says, distracted.

"... Will you two be quiet!" she shouts, covering the phone. "No. No, just tell her to leave you alone."

"Sorry about that," she says. No apology was necessary. "Like millions of other women out there who work full time, it's just having to make it all work. ... It's a full-time job, but I wouldn't trade it for anything."

McBride and her husband, John McBride, are partners in their family and her successful career. A former Garth Brooks crew member, he runs a sound company and the mixing board whenever she's on tour. The McBride girls -- Delaney Katharine, 11, Emma Justine, 7, and newcomer Ava Rose Kathleen, born June 20, 2005 -- often join them on the road.

"They like it," she says.

No word on whether the kids will be squabbling in the green room when McBride swings through Oakland's Petersen Events Center Sunday as part of a unique tour that showcases some of the classic country songs that she grew up singing.

Martina Mariea Schiff was born on July 29, 1966, the third of four children, to Daryl and Jean Schiff, proprietors of a Kansas dairy farm. Young Martina was admittedly nerdy as a child, wore big glasses and loved to read.

But even more, she loved to sing and play keyboard with her family's country band, The Schiffers. At roadhouses and festivals, they played classic country hits. After high school, she gigged around Kansas with several local bands.

In 1988, she married sound engineer McBride, and two years later they moved to Nashville. He worked for artists including Charlie Daniels and Ricky Van Shelton; she sang on other artists' demo tapes. John produced Martina's demo, labeling the unsolicited packages "requested materials" so they'd be opened. By 1991, light-speed by Nashville standards, the petite singer with the big voice was signed to a major-label contract.

Her debut album of traditional country and honky-tonk tunes went nowhere fast. McBride packed her second CD, "The Way That I Am," with mainstream radio-accessible country-pop. The first single, "My Baby Loves Me," spiked to No. 2 on the country charts, followed by a touching story tune, "Independence Day," which has remained her signature song, and "Life No. 9," which also cracked the Top 10.

McBride's ability to turn good songs into hits made her a magnet for the best songwriters in Nashville. She's got a powerful voice and a great look, but just as importantly, McBride and her artistic team have a knack for recognizing songs that will appeal to mainstream country radio's mostly female listeners. McBride says she doesn't intentionally record "issue" songs like "Independence Day," "Concrete Angel" and "A Broken Wing," but they've made her a star.

With a stack of No. 1 hits, McBride had finally earned enough power in the industry to buck the system and do something she'd always wanted. Last year, she returned to her roots with "Timeless," a collection of 18 of the classic country hits she grew up with. Had someone else released a CD that sounded 30 years old, it probably wouldn't have gotten a spin at Hot Country radio. McBride's star power pushed it to No. 1.

"I just felt like I really wanted to pay tribute to songs by some of those really great artists," she says. "I see it as a tribute album."

"Timeless" is as much a tribute to a bygone era as it is an homage to the writers who wrote the songs and the singers who sang them. Her cover of Johnny Cash's "I Still Miss Someone" swings with a new rhythm. But instead of putting her unique brand on Don Gibson's "I Can't Stop Loving You," Joe South's "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden," Hank Cochran's "Make the World Go Away," Kris Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through the Night" and more than a dozen more classic country hits, McBride and her session band attempted to duplicate the original recordings.

"Basically, the whole idea of it really is that updating a [song] would be making it into something else," she says. "These songs still stand up. I thought it would be more fun to find their little nuances and pay tribute to them."

There are two ways to look at that: Why bother, some might ask, to recast songs like The Everly Brothers' "Let It Be Me," Tammy Wynette's "Til I Can Make It on My Own" or Loretta Lynn's "You Ain't Woman Enough," when they're already been done so well? On the other hand, why not breathe new life into great songs like Hank Snow's "I Don't Hurt Anymore," Waylon Jennings' "Dreaming My Dreams" and Buck Owens' "Crying Time"? Isn't that what those artists would have done?

"They're not mine," says McBride. "I would never even call [those songs] mine. Songs like Lynn Anderson's 'I Can't Stop Loving You' -- I didn't want to make them something they're not."

McBride says she'll split her Sunday concert into separate but equal halves. The evening starts with 14 songs from the "Timeless" collection. McBride will take a 15-minute break and return with an hour of her contemporary country hits.

"Really, it's like two shows in one night," she says. "A lot of fun!"