First Steve Earle dished out country with some edge to it. Then, he veered more towards rock.

And then a folkie/Dylanesque side with musically spare sounding recordings.

The music chameleon justifies that title yet again on his new CD, "The Mountain," as he delves firmly into bluegrass in an album recorded with The Del McCoury Band, one of the best in the business today.

"I've always been a fan," says Earle in an interview from his E-Squared Record offices. "My whole first record is based on one big G run. Bluegrass has always influenced what I did. When I first moved here in 1974, the bluegrassers and the left of center country (musicians) hung out together. I know Vassar Clements for years. That's where I know Peter Rowan from."

This is not the first time Earle and the Del McCoury Band - Del on guitar and backing vocals, Rob McCoury on banjo, Ronnie McCoury on mandolin and vocals, Mike Bub on bass and Jason Carter on fiddle - joined forces. On Earle's musically diverse "El Corazon" from 1997, they recorded "I Still Carry You Around" together.

In fact, Del McCoury wasn't familiar with Earle until then.

"I remember hearing 'Copperhead Head' on the radio and 'Guitar Town,' says McCoury, on the phone from his home. "I really didn't know much about Steve until we recorded his song. I never actually met Steve (before) because we were probably playing different venues. I never met him until I moved down to Nashville (seven years ago)."

"Really, I never got familiar with his music too well until we recorded," says the affable McCoury.

The same cannot be said of Earle's knowledge of McCoury.

"I've been listening to him for years," says Earle, 44.

In 1990, McCoury recorded Earle's "Call Me If You Need a Fool" for his "The Blue Side of Town" album.

"When I got out of jail (Earle was jailed for about a year for drug possession), I played at a lot of bluegrass festivals - we did Telluride and Merlefest. Ronnie (McCoury, Del's son) started coming out to gig."

Based in Nashville, Earle used to head to the 12th & Porter club to take in bluegrass gigs. "I started hearing the Sidemen on Tuesday night," Earle says.

The group included Bub and Ronnie McCoury.

"I got into going down there," Earle says.

Earle gained his first notoriety with the edgy "Guitar Town" from 1986, which earned him his first Grammy nomination. His songs were filled with stories. By his fourth disc, "Copperhead Road," the Virginia native developed a harder edge.

And he was also considered hard to deal with, never fitting it into the go-along, get-along Nashville lifestyle.

MCA dropped him. He went through numerous marriages and became mired in drug use.

When released from the pokey, Earle recorded the soft "Train A Comin'," a very strong comeback album. He has repeatedly hit the mark since with "I Feel Alright" the following year and "El Corazon."

A bluegrass recording wasn't in his original plans. He wanted to make another "Train a Comin'."

"But Roy Huskey got sick and died, (and) I couldn't see plugging another bass player into it," Earle says.

The recording of "I Still..." on "El Corazon" inspired Earle on to do more of the same. The song "turned out so well and was so much fun. I was decided I was going to write a bluegrass a record, I mean a hardcore bluegrass record."

McCoury says Earle told him, "'You know I'm going to write a bluegrass album.' I thought, man that's probably going to happen in 20 years."

McCoury may have doubted Earle, but obviously shouldn't have.

"During the 'El Corazon' recording, I wrote most of these songs," says Earle.

"We started talking about doing it," Earle says of he and McCoury. "We recorded it in two sets of sessions. One was last June and went back again in September."

It didn't take too much to convince McCoury to participate. "I knew for one thing that he was a good songwriter, a musician and singer," McCoury says. "He had so many good songs. I knew if he did write a bluegrass album, I knew they would be good songs. I just knew that because of his past. That's why I said, 'heck, we'll just do it because I know he'll have good songs. And I know it won't be that hard to do."

But a few things intervened on the way to making the album. For starters, Warner Brothers, which released his last two discs refused to put out a bluegrass album, according to Earle.

"This is a bluegrass record," says Earle. "They told me I couldn't make a bluegrass record. I told them to fuck off."

Earle is putting out the disc once again on his own label, E-Squared.

E-Squared had distribution through Warner Brothers. But that deal is over, and Earle isn't complaining one bit. Warner funded E-Squared, which has acts like Cheri Knight and The V-Roys.

"Indy labels being funded (by majors) just doesn't work. I managed to get out of that with all my bands. I have to stay solvent for the label to stay solvent."

That will mean Earle will continue recording for major labels to pay the bills.

Earle says "The Mountain" was recorded "all pretty much live, so didn't take a lot of time to record."

"It was a pretty easy process," McCoury says.

The first go round was three days, and they spent five more days in September.

"Del has brought back the one mike thing," Earle says. "That's the way I've been performing with Del. We didn't quite do that in the studio. I was on one side, and they were all on the other side facing me which worked better for all of us.'

"We recorded until we got the take," Earle says. "We all got around this tangle of microphones that Ray Kennedy set up."

"To me when I was as a kid, watching bluegrass as a kid, one of the most exciting things was the choreography around a mike," Earle says.

"Bluegrass is the original alternative country music," Earle says.

While a few guest musicians also played, McCoury's band is there throughout. Earle did consider using a bunch of different players. "I thought about it, but it was much easier to do it with one band that plays together all the time," Earle says. "I didn't have the energy or the time to make 'Will the Circle Be Unbroken,' and it's already been made."

"I think they're the best band in bluegrass right now. Ronnie's getting fucking frightening. Del's the best tenor also. So that's a pretty strong case also."

"They play absolutely telepathic rhythm together," Earle concludes. "That's why this band is so fucking great."

"I was trying to write songs that worked on these instruments," Earle says of the trials and tribulations of writing bluegrass songs. "Some of it's pretty strictly bluegrass by anyone's definition, and some of it is outside of it. The stuff that's outside of that is older than bluegrass ("Outlaw's Honeymoon") That's like an old string band record. Those things are all a part why bluegrass became what it did."

"The Graveyard Shift" is a blues number.

Earle duets with Iris Dement on "I'm Still in Love With You." He heard her sing in a festival in Australia a few years ago and decided he just had to write a song with a duet with her in mind.

"That was just the latest in that fascination with real duets. There's been one on every record for awhile...I was standing in the audience watching her sing. I told her I would write a duet, but she didn't believe me."

"It came out sounding like a Louvin Brothers record," he says.

The song was recorded live. "We actually sang our individual parts," Earle says. "The only things that are overdubbed are Ronnie's and Del's harmonies. They weren't familiar with the material."

Earle's favorite song is the title track. "I think it's the best song on the record," he says, adding, "It's the one I'm proudest of. I like 'I'm Still in Love With You.' It's a challenge writing a duet. I like songs like that. They're real simple songs like that."

"I can write 'Carrie Brown,' 'My Old Friend the Blues,' 'Valentine's Day' all day," Earle says. Referring to duets, "Those are harder to write. They just have to be exactly right."

One of the most touching songs is "Pilgrim," written by Earle on the day of Huskey's funeral.

"I was asked to sing, and I couldn't find anything I was as comfortable with singing, so I wrote something," Earle says.

The tight timing did not throw him. "I do pretty well with deadlines. That was hard because I lost a friend, but that's just what I do."

Helping out on backing chorus are Huskey's widow, Lisa and children Taylor and J.T., Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Sam Bush and Tim O'Brien also lend their voices.

"'Pilgrim' was kind of cool," says Earle. "It was the wild card. It wasn't recorded completely live because we couldn't get everyone together. There were all people who worked with Roy a lot, including his kids and wife The rest of the vocal sessions were done in three different sessions. We just couldn't schedule everyone at once."

"The first time we heard it back, all the girls were in the room cried, and the guys should have. We're guys so we didn't.

"It worked the way it was supposed to. You don't know you've realized it until you've actually finished it."

Earle tried recording "Outlaw's Honeymoon" for "El Corazon," but it was a no go. "I tried it solo sort of the way I tried 'South Nashville Blues,' but it didn't work that way."

Earle has not spent all his time honing his bluegrass skills. He recently returned from another writing stint in Ireland. He has been working on a book of nine short series, destined to be published this summer by Houghton Mifflin. More work remains for Earle.

His experiences in Ireland affected "The Mountain." "All my instrumentals ("Connemara Breakdown" and "Paddy on the Beat") are very heavily influenced by my time I spent in Ireland, and these songs definitely are."

McCoury and Earle will join forces for touring starting in March at the Station Inn in Nashville before spreading out around the U.S. with McCoury opening and then being joined by Earle before he launches into his own solo set.

But that will not be the last you hear of Earle in his latest musical venture.

The musical chameleon isn't hanging up his bluegrass credentials just yet. "My next record will be a rock record. I genuinely love bluegrass. Now that I discovered I can write it, I'll do it again. If it sucked..."