MOORESVILLE —There’s one thing that might prevent Russ Caldwell from reaching superstardom: humility.

Luckily, he’s got charm, determination and a mean two-fingered guitar picking style that complements his songwriting and singing abilities. And those were the qualities he acquired before entering high school.

Caldwell’s story is not unfamiliar. There have been many accounts of ordinary-kid-turned-entertainer: Michael Jackson, Brandy, Ricky Martin. But his story is interesting.

Though his maternal great-grandparents were singers/dancers/pianists, Caldwell admits he was not truly influenced by them or any of the other “traditional” country singers he’d heard and seen.

Instead, his motivation came during a radical change in country music, when industry images moved from traditional to sensational.

“I saw Garth Brooks on what must have been his first NBC special,”Caldwell remembers. “He was up there and had all the lights, had his guitar … he just had his style. And I wanted to be that the minute I saw it.” Caldwell, now 18, was then about 8.

Immediately, he asked his parents for a guitar.

“I got a booklet and video with it and thought, ‘I don’t need lessons! I’m going to learn this on my own!’ ” he says, laughing. “So I’d watch the video, play a few chords, get real aggravated for a couple days, then pick it back up.”

Finally, either because his parents ran out of patience or he really did learn to play a few chords, they decided to send him for professional lessons.

“My grandpa was like, ‘He don’t need lessons, he’ll be playing that rock ’n roll music!’ ” Caldwell remembers. But, at age 10, he took lessons anyway, under the direction of a Mooresville teacher who taught him — to grandpa’s satisfaction — traditional country.

Caldwell’s biography notes that he progressed so well, his instructor put him on his own in less than a year.

The excitement was overwhelming. At one time he thought, since he’d always been good at it, he would choose art as a profession.

“That’s all I did was draw,”he says. “But then, this guitar came into the picture and that’s all I wanted to do.”

Though country was his mainstay, he learned to play music styles from rock to bluegrass to Southern rock. After performing for family and friends, he finally built up the courage to perform publicly when he was just shy of a bonafide teen-ager. He took that $150 guitar his parents bought from a local pawn shop, with all the knowledge he’d absorbed from the video and book that came with it, and got on stage at his school talent show.

“My guitar wasn’t even miked,” he says. “You could hear me louder than anything. My voice sounded like Mickey Mouse, and the guitar sounded like, ‘clang, clang, clang.’ But, I played ‘Chattahoochee’ by Alan Jackson. Ever since, I’ve felt like, ‘I’ve got to do this more!’ ”

“The school gave him the confidence to get up and go out,”says his mother, Linda Parker, who adds that, from that point, her son got requests to play at churches, senior adult functions and festivals, and the talent show at the annual Threshers’ Convention in Denton. There, for the first time, at age 12, he would play in front of a crowd of about 4,000 and return every year for four years.

“The more the audience gives me,”Caldwell says, “the more Igive back. It’s a feeding thing.”

They must have fed him well, because a couple years later he opened shows at Charlotte’s Blockbuster Pavilion for David Ball, Dwight Yoakam, Vince Gill and Larry Stewart. The same year, he formed his first band, Desert Rain, and wrote his first song, “Takin’ a Ride.”

“People were telling us, ‘You need to have this kid recorded, he’s got a good voice!’ ” Parker remembers. She took Russ to a local man who helped him record “A Country Song,” an 11-song CD.

“Then we met this man who has tour buses, who’s taken a lot of the big stars on tour … . They heard about Russ’ (accomplishments) and sent him to recording people in Nashville,”Parker says. At 15, Caldwell traveled to Nashville, where he recorded a two-song demo with guitarist Jim Vest. By then, he was performing in Asheville, Statesville and at the North Carolina Racing Hall of Fame.

His second trip to Nashville resulted in an eight-song CD, “Midnight Special,” produced by Larry Shell.

“He told us when he first heard Russ, ‘I predicted that Alabama would get there before they did, and I hear something (in you),’” Parker says.

Nashville music executive Dick McVey heard something in him, too. Caldwell’s mother found McVey on the Internet.

“I get contacted through the Internet all the time,” McVey says. “Probably every day Iget two to four e-mails from those who are in a start-up point in their career. They are already in their 30s, have families. But Russ’ situation offered us an opportunity to get with someone who was young enough that we had several years to develop him before we had to worry about him being over the hill. That’s why Russ … was ahead of others.”

McVey, who has worked with George Jones and on projects with The Bellamy Brothers and Loretta Lynn, wanted to join the country music trend of promoting talented, super-young performers to a new generation of listeners.

“The teen-age thing sort of started in country and spread to pop music,”McVey says.

The promoter says he was also impressed that Caldwell was multi-talented at such a young age.

“(Performers) usually have the ability to play but not sing so well, or sing and not play so well. Some write and sing, play and sing … but Russ’ ability to play, sing and write is rare.”

Caldwell continued to gain popularity, spawning more trips to Nashville, where he worked with songwriter Judy Rodman and showcased at The Castle Door on Music Row, where Garth Brooks’ studio band backed him and where he played four of his own songs. And early this year, he recorded a four-song demo at The Love Shack, again backed by Brooks’ studio band.

But now, McVey explains, youth marketing in this country has “died down,” causing him to put Caldwell on a kind of furlow.

“Right now, country music is down because they took a good thing and continued to manufacture it over and over and didn’t evolve,”he explains. “Creativity started to lag. Once they got on a roll with certain acts, they continued to develop that same kind of act, same kind of music.”

Add to that, he continues, the fact that the fans of contemporary country stars like Garth Brooks, who “drew a new clientele to country … like the yuppies,” have moved on to other kinds of music. “Without the big sales … it’s slowed down a bit.”

But McVey didn’t want his client to be caught up in the gray area of country music’s transition phase.

“Instead of him being on the tail end of something that’s on its way down, I want him to be the start of something new.”

Caldwell has been advised to pursue a college education and, in the meantime, make himself available for as many events as he can. And he has, including opening for Reba McEntire and Steve Wariner on the acoustic sidestage at Charlotte’s Blockbuster Pavilion last July and performing at local clubs, fairs and benefit concerts. He was chosen to perform at an industry seminar and also has his own Web site, which is said to average 1,000 hits a month.

“We’re learning, and everybody in this business knows it’s a long, hard walk and a lot of doors will be closed to you,”Parker says. “We’ve already got two letters from (companies) that said they’d seriously considered him but, for one, their roster was full. The other said they couldn’t take him at this time. Country is not selling that well like pop … . But you just keep on keeping on.”

McVey hopes to deal with MCA, RCA or Mercury when the market is right for Caldwell.

“We’ve got interest from a couple of major labels, but the money is slow so they’re not in a signing mode,”he says. “They’re trying to work through this slump, and we’re not seeing them in the position where they can spend the kind of money to break Russ out of the pack. My plan is to continue to watch the market very closely, and at any point Ifeel like I see a possibility, we’ll get him back in there. We haven’t hit the big one yet, but we’re waiting.”

As for the aspiring entertainer, if Mooresville does end up being his final destination, he’ll be just as happy.

“If I get a record deal, that’s great, it’s nice,”Caldwell says. “But if Idon’t, I’m happy just playing around here, finding people to jam with … playing around here in a coffee shop, to tell you the truth. As long as I’m playing, it doesn’t really matter how. But if I do get a record deal… .”