Beth Hart’s life is the stuff of great blues songs, equal parts victory and failure, triumph and tragedy. The singer-songwriter has battled drug and alcohol addiction, struggled with a troubled mind, signed and then lost a major label deal and rebounded to Grammy-nominated acclaim. She has played for loose change on street corners and sung in the spotlight at the Kennedy Center.

“Man, being a human being is a mother, isn’t it?” Hart says with a soft laugh, calling from her home in Los Angeles. She’s been sober now for five years and relies on therapy, meditation, church, medication and vitamins to help her stay that way. She’s accepted that grappling with her various demons — including bipolar disorder — is lifelong and requires a balanced approach.

“I have two doctors, a trauma specialist and a psychiatrist,” she explains. “They’re both great and we dive into the negative stuff. Then I go to church for the opposite of that. At church, it’s all love, joy and gratitude.”

That balance of darkness and light informs Hart’s fine new album “War In My Mind” (Provogue). The release is a testament to her wide-ranging command of blues, pop, rock, jazz, folk and gospel. She’s a remarkable and versatile singer, her vocals scraping the rafters one moment and trembling and vulnerable the next.

The arresting cover image of the new album features a photo of the singer-pianist playing an upright piano that’s sitting in the bed of a pickup truck. Hart is captured mid-song, hands on the piano keys, her eyes looking down in concentration. Behind her, a highway spools into the distance. Rain clouds and lightening intertwine with her hair and head.

Entrancing, mystical and moody, it’s a striking image. Hart didn’t wear any makeup for the shoot. “I’m 47, the jig is up, just let it be,” she says with a laugh. “I’m not a pop star, so it’s OK.”

A charming, funny woman who pours her life into her songs, Hart has traveled a circuitous path in her career. Born in Los Angeles, she was a natural on the piano, playing Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” by ear at the age of four. She was still a kid when her parents went through a painful divorce, leaving the young Hart devastated by her father’s departure. She studied cello and opera and was accepted at L.A.’s prestigious High School for the Arts before running off to Brooklyn with an abusive boyfriend at the age of 14. A year later she returned to L.A. to pursue music in earnest.

In 1993, she entered “Star Search,” the televised entertainment competition hosted by Johnny Carson’s sidekick Ed McMahon. The show was in its waning days and Hart figured nobody watched it anymore. She roared through 13 episodes, winning the female vocalist category and $125,000. Even after splitting it with her then-manager, Hart had never seen that much cash. She promptly blew her chunk of change on a new apartment, new furniture, a Chrysler LeBaron, drugs and alcohol.

Two years later she was broke and busking in Santa Monica. That’s where Hart met her new manager, David Wolff, who has stayed with her to this day. She signed to Atlantic Records and recorded strong material including 1999's “Screamin’ for My Supper.” But her personal demons caught up with her and she was eventually dropped by the label.

Hart and her husband Scott Guetzkow, who is her co-road manager, have been together for 20 years and married for 19. She was at a low point in life when the two first met — she’d burned bridges with family and friends and was struggling with her addictions. The couple had been dating less than a month when she went into rehab. Guetzkow visited her and provided moral support.

Over time, Hart recovered her momentum, released successful solo albums and developed a strong following in Europe. Along the way she collaborated with former Guns N’ Roses guitar-slinger Slash, British rock legend Jeff Beck and blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa.

One of the high water marks came in 2012 when Beck asked her to perform a tribute song to blues icon Buddy Guy, who was being honored at the Kennedy Center. In front of a live audience that included President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, Hart wailed out a show-stopping rendition of the classic “I’d Rather Go Blind.” The performance earned a standing ovation. Afterward back at the hotel, she ran into her childhood idol, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who gave her a big hug.

Through it all, Hart credits her husband with helping her stay the course.

“I’m so grateful to Scott because it’s not easy being married to someone who has so many swings,” she says. “He’s a great man.”

It was Guetzkow who encouraged her to name her new album after the song “War In My Mind,” an evocative number that captures the emotional turbulence of a troubled psyche.

“Scott said it was important to take my struggles with my mind and turn it into something positive,” she says.

Hart co-wrote the shimmering “Thankful” with her longtime friend and occasional collaborator Rune Westberg. The song expresses gratitude for both the good and bad experiences in life: “Thank you for the big climb / Thank you for the fall / Thank you for my life / Thank you for it all.”

“I’m really religious and Rune is an atheist,” Hart says. “We were writing that song and he said, ‘It feels like God has walked into the room.’ We were both crying. We were writing something we had only hoped for. It was such a neat thing.”

A gospel choir rises in “Let It Grow,” a warm pop anthem that channels “Tapestry”-era Carole King. There’s a bit of Billie Holiday sultriness in the jazzy “Without Words in the Way.”

The funky, percolating “Try a Little Harder” was inspired by her gambler father, who in the 1970s was a bail bondsman with a penchant for the baccarat table. “The hotel would fly him to Las Vegas and put him up, because they knew he’d throw down,” Hart recalls about her dad. “He was such a maniac, which is what I love about him.”

One of the most powerful tracks on the album is the quietly rendered “Sister Dear,” Hart’s cry of the heart to her oldest sister Susan, who took on the role of tough matriarch in the family. The two sisters had always had a strained relationship, but things grew more tense in the years following the death of their middle sister Sharon. Sharon had been a talented athlete in gymnastics and diving who also excelled at flute and piano. But at 16 she went off the rails and started shooting cocaine. She died from complications due to AIDS when Hart was 20 years old.

Hart and her oldest sister Susan eventually attended therapy together, an experience that allowed Hart to finally see Susan in an empathetic light. After their first session, Hart went home and wrote the delicate and moving “Sister Dear”: “I was so hard on you / I was wrong for so long / could you ever forgive me?”

“That first therapy session alone healed so much of all those years of anger,” Hart says. “I realized my sister Susan is not a mountain. She’s a human being. As the oldest, she was put in the position of being the matriarch. She had to be aggressive and dominant, because my mother was not. That first session humbled me. I went home, wrote that song and sent it to her that night. She cried when she heard it. She’s tough, so she doesn’t cry very often.”

Hart is grateful for her life and career. She measures success on her own terms.

“During high school, a friend asked me what my music dream was,” she recalls. “I told him that it was being 80 years old in a little jazz club, having a cigarette and sitting at the mic and killing it. It’s about doing music all the way to the end, until I die.”

In concert

Who: Beth Hart in concert

When: 8 p.m. May 15

Where: Fox Theater, Foxwoods

Tickets: $40, $50

Call: 1-800-200-2882