It might be an exaggeration to call Blind Nello the biggest little record label in Texas, but not much.

After all, Mark David Manders is 6-2 and 180 pounds, and he's the smallest of the three guys on Blind Nello. The label began as a made-up name so that Manders could more easily convince Americana radio stations that a "real" record label believed in his music.

Kevin Deal (6-4, 220) and Max Stalling (6-6, 205) are his label mates.

But, since size doesn't count, it's also important to point out that Manders' new album, "Chili Pepper Sunset," made it up to number 5 on Gavin's Americana chart; Deal's "Honky-Tonks -n- Churches" reached number 10 in the spring, and the buzz is that Stalling's brand-new "Wide Afternoon" could climb at least as high. (Stalling's previous album, "Comfort in the Curves," reached number 16 last summer.)

Texas legend Lloyd Maines - sometimes acknowledged as the world's best steel guitar player - produced Manders' and Deal's albums; former Robert Earl Keen bassist Dave Heath produced Stalling's.

Stalling is a country-folk storyteller whose songs often explore the clash between a simpler past and a more complicated present. The new album is filled with gentle, thoughtful songs about home and the road.

"The road has a lot of metaphors; life is a journey, and what better metaphor than a highway," Stalling says. "What I finally came to realize is that life is not about the destination, but about the trip. The story is in the journey."

Deal's brand of country is influenced by blues and rock. The harmonica virtuoso's "Honky-Tonks -n- Churches" explores the often tenuous and sometimes irreconcilable relationships between religion and the night life.

"I grew up listening to my dad's music - Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and other hard-core country music," Deal says. "When we were little kids, my mom would sings us hymns at night. Much of this album explores the contrasts and the collisions of these two worlds."

Manders is a more traditional-country-and-western storyteller with an eye for details. With his Nuevo Tejas (that's Spanish for "new Texas") band, Manders is also the hard-working showman of the group, capable of holding a rowdy bar crowdÕs attention.

When a Nashville executive told Manders that his songs were too specific - "they have too many words in them" - Manders and a couple of bandmates responded by writing a six-minute, two-word song: "Beer."

That's the kind of independence that led to Blind Nello Records in particular and to a coming resurgence in Texas' storytelling singer-songwriters in general.

"When we did our third album," Manders says, "it looks bad if you don't have a label and you are trying to work the charts. We play a lot of 42, and my bass player Russ Sherefield says, 'Why don't we just call it Blind Nello, because if you go blind nello youÕve got to lose everything to win.'"

All three label mates have, so far, kept their day jobs, and all three understand the realities of the business world. Manders installs lawn-irrigation systems. Deal is a stonemason with 35-40 employees. Stalling does product development for Frito-Lay; earlier, he developed the Earth Grain line of grocery store bagels.

"I do a lot of project management at work, and thinking in those terms helps in putting out an independent release," Stalling says. "The business side of a music career can be overwhelming. There are a lot of moving parts, and all those things have to come together. You've got to eat it like an elephant: one bite at a time."

The tiny Blind Nello now has a distribution deal with Sony.

"This thing started out almost as a joke, more like a co-op than a record label," Manders says. "It's turning into a reality, and weÕve had a couple of meetings recently to decide how we are going to do this.Ó

The rewards of making and selling music without big-label support more than make up for the challenges.

"I've never been on a big label, but I've heard horror stories," Deal says. "Like I told Mark, Blind Nello doesn't do much for you, but it doesn't do anything to you, either. You know where you stand, and if you don't do what needs to be done, then it probably wonÕt get done."

Manders says the top challenge is trying to balance family, music, and day job.

"It's a big roller coaster ride. But once it's in our blood, you're stuck with it. You're either going to make it or you are going to be miserable for the rest of your life."

The biggest reward for Manders is that "we have complete and total control over our sound. If you sign a contract with a record label, they get to pick the producer and everything else. And the only money some people really see from a label is when they go on tour. We're self-sufficient; we don't have a label siphoning beaucoup bucks off our sales."

Stalling says, "You get to call all the shots: make all the decisions, spend all the money (yours or whatever you can hustle up), do the booking, select the promotion schedule, handle distribution contracts, chase down endorsements, write the songs, manage a band; pick out which color T-shirts to have made up. At the end of the day, it's your name on your music done the way you want it done. I'm reminded of the two skinny buzzards sitting on a desert tree limb and one is saying to the other, ÔWait for something to die!? Hell, I'm gonna go out and kill something!'"

Manders and Deal have known each other since their days at Wilson Middle School in the Dallas suburb of Plano. Manders and Stalling met at the old Three Teardrops Tavern in Dallas in 1993 when Stalling - a South Texas native - was just beginning to write and play.

Stalling and Manders both recorded their co-written "Scars and Souvenirs," a song about one of Manders' uncles who endured life's hardships with a smile and a shot or two of brandy.

Manders' finds his songs in outlaw tales and out-of-the-way places like the inscription on the West Texas grave of an Irish infant, which led to "Anne Marie," a song about love and dreams.

On "Bass Run," Stalling reminisces about a child who slept by open windows hearing the distant sound of a Mexican bass guitar, but who grows up and trades wide open spaces for a job that pays well. On "Heat of the Wide Afternoon," a driver is "trapped between morning's optimism and night's fleeting dreams," a place "where reality looms in the heat of the wide afternoon"

Deal was in a three-piece rock band after high school, but took time off to raise a family and make a living.

In 1993, he met and played at a blues jam with bluesman Curly "Barefoot" Miller at the Froggy Bottoms club in Dallas. He played harmonica with Miller for a couple of years at blues clubs all over the Dallas-Fort Worth area and sat in with several bands.

When Miller began touring Europe, Deal hooked up with rising Texas honky-tonk star Ed Burleson for another four years and often sat in with Manders.

"Kevin reminds me a lot of Steve Earle, just in his voice and inflection," Manders says.

"I like his story songs, and you can't mention him without talking about his harmonica. He's a prolific writer. It takes me a year to finish a song. Kevin can come up with an album in a week."

Stalling says Deal has "the heart of Bob Dylan," and "just keeps getitng progressively better and better."

He says Manders is his "songwriting soulmate. He's instilled in me the passion he has for giving every word weight and making every line count. He has a theory about looking at the line before and the line after and meshing all of it together - sometimes so subtly that no one else may ever consciously recognize the tie-in."

Manders, in turn, says Stalling "is probably one of the deepest writers IÕve known personally. Anybody can make words rhyme. Max takes time to make words mean something and play off each other and have two or three different meanings."

Because they still have day jobs, Manders, Deal, and Stalling haven't performed a lot outside Texas and the surrounding states. That hasn't slowed down the rush of the biggest little label up the charts.