Misconceptions and misperceptions surround Junior Brown. For one, he's not an Ernest Tubb imitator. Secondly, while he loves traditional country music and certainly bemoans the direction that country has gone, he's not a traditional country artist.

Just call him country with a twist, as heard on his fifth full-length studio album, the aptly titled "Mixed Bag."

Mixed therein Brown re-interprets Jerry Reed's "Guitar Man," Hoagy Carmichael's "Riverboat Shuffle" along with nine originals. And oh yeah, Brown covers Ernest Tubb's "Kansas City Blues."

"I like Ernest Tubb, but if I was just satisfied with being an Ernest Tubb imitator, I wouldn't get anywhere," Brown says by phone from Alexandria, Va. "You can definitely hear the influence, of course, but there's a lot more going on."

Until now, Brown's closest foray into Tubb's catalog was a song that Brown wrote, "My Baby Don't Dance to Nothing But Ernest Tubb." For the sole reason of developing his own identity, Brown purposely resisted recording an E.T. song until now.

"It's a nice idea for a song, and I'd never recorded an Ernest Tubb song," Brown says. "It was time to do one, but not really for that reason. It's a good song, a good way to show how the blues and country are so close to each other. I purposely chose not to do it in the Ernest Tubb style, except a little bit with the voice. I used horns, and that's things he would have never used. I had a lot of fun with it."

Brown recorded "Kansas City Blues" during a two-song session in New Orleans, which also included a horn-honking cover of Hoagy Carmichael's "Riverboat Shuffle."

"The song 'Riverboat Shuffle' was one that I'd been listening to since I was a kid, and I'd performed it from time to time," Brown says. "I really wanted to figure out a way that the steel guitar could fit into a dixieland horn section."

In lieu of a trombone, Brown's steel merely mimicked the elongated horn's sound.

"I slipped a steel into there and in places it sounds like a trombone, but more importantly the thing feels like a trombone. It does the things that a trombone does. It was just an interesting exercise to do that, plus I loved the song. That was the reason why I called (the album) 'Mixed Bag.' Just because I had so many different things on there."

Not that fans will hear Limp Bizkit-like heavy metal or Snoop Dogg rap from Brown's barrel-chested baritone.

"It's all me. It all has the unifying sound of me, my voice and my guitar playing. It's mixed, a little more mixed than the other albums, but they're all somewhat of a mixed bag, too."

Indeed, expect a mixed bag of ballads and novelties, blues and straightforward country. Here and there, there are tinges of rock, too, along with an instrumental tune, "The Chase," to close out the album.

"You're usually either a player or a singer," Brown says. "There's not too many that do both. There's still some of the older guys, like B.B. King, that are equally good at both."

That Brown included an instrumental highlights his power in choosing material, as they are few in number during today's closely monitored and manipulated recording sessions.

Furthermore, Brown also produces his albums. As such, he assembles the musicians he wants, picks all the material and decides in full how the album will sound. From lyric one to the final note, Brown's the boss on his highway.

"I'd already made two records when I signed with Curb, and my production ability was evident. You either get it, or you don't. Bringing in another producer I didn't think would improve what I was doing, and apparently they agreed, so it was all just an understanding that we had. I don't think I've let 'em down as a producer. I think my production ability has gotten better. As far as how commercial that is, I don't know, but I do think the production has improved."

With production duties, freedom follows. How many artists would ever have been allowed to record something like "My Wife Thinks You're Dead" or even "Highway Patrol"?

"It's an added responsibility, too. You've got to work harder. I remember hearing another artist saying recently, 'well, now I can go home after a day's work of recording. I finally got a producer that can sit around and go through vocals all night.' I thought, 'I wonder what that would be like?' You know, I like the work, and I work hard."

For evidence, listen no further than the album's opening track, a cover of Reed's masterful "Guitar Man."

"It tells my story, about a kid going around town trying to make his living as a guitar player, and he finally gets his own band," Brown says. "I thought it would be a good way for me to put my own little brand on that song because I think it's a good story. I didn't really like some of the versions I'd heard on it, including mine. I think it's a really good song, but I could have done it better. People seem to like it, though. They seem to think it's Okay."

That's an understatement. Brown's pulled off many a strong solos with his guit-steel (a contraption of a guitar and steel guitar on different necks attached to the same body) through the years, and this one ranks right among his best. As he's want to do, Brown varied the song's arrangement to better accentuate his six-string slingin' style. Instead of a short solo, Brown buries deep and digs out one blazing barrage of notes.

"I had a hard time with that solo," Brown says. "One of my fingers split wide open when I played that. I was in a lot of pain. I kept trying to Crazy Glue it together, then I'd go back, and I'd rip it right open again, so I just figured if I'm gonna make this record I'm gonna have to play with it ripped open. It's very difficult. It's that flesh right underneath the callous. The new skin under there, which is bright red. You start sticking a guitar string into that, and it's very painful."

Brown, blood on the strings and one wailing "Guitar Man" result. Then again, that's nothing new for the dark-suited singer.

Say you're writing a song. Lyrics don't just tumble forth onto an empty page, adorned with notes and a how-to list of instructions. Blue collar laborers sweat on the outside; musicians sweat from within. With each drop, may come a line. For each song, most any writer must sweat a river.

"I think in the writing you just have to work, work, work and select the very best material you can," Brown says, who despite the perception that he records mostly covers, instead pens most of his songs. "Don't be afraid to record some tunes and throw 'em away, throw 'em away in favor of some better tunes."

He adds that no one brand of song is harder than another. Love songs, novelty songs - no matter.

"Getting a good idea is the hardest thing because there's no good formula for that. You either get a good idea, or you don't," Brown says. "You can't set out to get one. If you have a weak line in there, you have to know where it is, and make it stronger.

"I work real hard to get the sounds I hear in my head. Sometimes I get closer than on others, but I got pretty close on this one. The sound that I've heard over the years is because of the experience that I've had listening to tunes that I enjoyed, and I always kept that in my head. Then you finally get a chance to do it, and you work your tail off. When you finally get it, it's a feeling of accomplishment."

Back to "The Chase," as accomplished an instrumental as Brown's burned the barn with to date.

Few country fans worth more than two cents would fail to recognize the name and works of famous finger-pickers Chet Atkins and Merle Travis.

But fleet-fingered Buck Trent reserves a spot almost exclusively among the musical palates of the more astute followers of country . The innovating Trent made a name for himself while playing the electric banjo as a member of Porter Wagoner's Wagonmasters during the 1960's. Brown numbers among the musicians who call themselves a fan of the somewhat eccentric Trent.

Just listen to "The Chase."

"You got it. I interpreted that on guitar at a pretty young age because I loved the way he played so much," Brown says. "It's only an interpretation. All of the guitar licks are completely different, different picking style, but it's camouflaged to sound like that, to give you the feeling of a banjo. It's an example of how an influence can be used not as an imitation, but taken to the next level. I took the electric banjo style to another level. I made it a guitar thing."

Friends, that's why Brown's a musician and the imitators are something just short. Imitation, Brown says, is a good starting point for any musician, but without some style of your own, you'll always fall short of those who do.

"That's what I used to do. I couldn't copy singers as well as I could guitar players. I could make it sound like that guy was right there, but big deal. So what? Hank Garland, the great guitar player, the same thing. He played me a tape of him singing "Slippin' Around," the Floyd Tillman tune, and you would have sworn that that was Floyd Tillman. It was that close. Big deal. You think he wanted to do that? That was just something he did in the old days for a few bucks."

Such distinct stylists as Merle Haggard and George Jones are some of the best vocal imitators you will ever hear. Mel Tillis, too. But they knew as Brown knows, that such ways aren't the ways to stardom.

"There's some good examples. Merle Haggard started imitating Lefty Frizzell and changed it a little, adapted it to his voice and threw in a little Jimmie Rodgers and mixed it all up," Brown says. "So, he took the Lefty influence and the Lefty sound and added his own thing to it."

And that's what Brown does with Ernest Tubb. Hear just about any Junior Brown tune, and Tubb chimes in as well, though only as an influence.

After all, Tubb never recorded with horns, didn't play lead or steel guitar and would never have been mentioned in the same breath with rock legends Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

"There's nobody who would say that Merle Haggard isn't an original," Brown says.

Same goes for that guitar slingin' son of a gun Junior Brown.