Two nights before Christmas, a freak December storm across the Midwest has kept Grascals singer and guitarist Jamie Johnson bound to his Nashville-area home, disrupting not only his holiday travel plans back to his native Indiana, but also canceling an opportunity to sing with one of his idols, bluegrass legend Bobby Osborne.

Still, he muses, there have been few other black clouds in 2004 for Johnson, 32, and his band mates - fiddler Jimmy Mattingly, lead singer Terry Eldredge, banjo player David Talbot, mandolinist Danny Roberts and bassist Terry Smith.

Two months prior to the official February release date of their self-titled Rounder debut, their rollicking cover version from that album of Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas," featuring a guest vocal by Dolly Parton, clocked into Billboard's country singles sales chart at an impressive number three.

Heady territory, and pretty much uncharted waters for bluegrassers, and Johnson admits the reaction has been surprising.

"That was actually David Talbot's idea...he's a big Elvis fan, he had originally taken the idea to another band, and they didn't want to do it. So he threw the idea up to us and our first instinct - we didn't think it would jibe, but as soon as he played it for us, and we listened to it a few times, then he took out the banjo and gave us an idea of the tempo he wanted to go...and we just got a kick out of it right off the bat and thought it would be great. It's turning out better than we thought it would."

"The tracks were done, and then we decided we (would approach) Dolly with it. We told her we had recorded it, and she said 'Wow, that's a great idea, I wish I would have thought of that', so then that makes the idea pop in our heads, 'how cool would it be to have Dolly sing with Terry (Eldredge) on that?', so she came in."

Dolly's support in the band's success, of course, extends far beyond doing a guest vocal here or there. For the last few months, The Grascals have been the regular opener in her touring show, and Johnson enthuses about the doors that have opened for them.

"She treats us like family," he says. "Of course, she's just right out there, and of course the advantage for The Grascals is the fact that we get to open up every single show we go out and do with her, in front of usually a crowd of 5,000-7,000 a night, minimum. And you're in front of a lot of folks who would not normally be listening to bluegrass music, so that's opened up a whole new audience for us...we've captured quite a few fans from playing in front of probably a quarter-million people over the last three months."

It's not, of course, as if they're a bunch of young unknowns becoming "overnight successes."

As with most veteran bluegrass and country musicians, a full rundown of the history and connections between these six guys is long. Suffice it to say that if Garth Brooks, the Osborne Brothers, Jimmy Martin and countless studio sessions with the Music Row elite ring any bells in your consciousness, chances are you've experienced the music of one or more of them.

Curiously, Johnson says, the band's genesis lies in a chance meeting between the two of them - he and Mattingly - who had not previously known each other.

As a longtime member of Brooks' band, Mattingly had wide national recognition, due in large part to his appearance with Brooks in the Dr. Pepper TV commercial that was aired extensively. They met, Johnson recalls, at Nashville's famous bluegrass tavern, the Station Inn, where Johnson was a regular with the renowned house band, the Sidemen.

"I knew Jimmy had some connections with the Osborne Brothers a few years back and also that he had been a member of Dolly Parton's band a few years back...he came down and heard me. I knew exactly who he was because he had played for Garth and had been on TV and is probably one of the most decorated fiddle players of all time. I thought it would be intimidating, but it wasn't intimidating at all. He's a super nice guy."

They hit it off immediately, but the idea of forming a band was still somewhere off in the future.

"After a few months, he called back to me and asked me what I'd think about getting a band together. The first guy we picked was Terry Eldredge, and then the next guy we talked to was David Talbot, and then from there it went to the obvious choices for bass player and mandolin player, with Terry Smith on bass and Danny Roberts on mandolin."

"The cool connection there is that Terry Smith played with Terry Eldredge for 12 years with the Osborne Brothers and started The Sidemen with him years ago, and then another cool connection is that Danny Roberts and Jimmy Mattingly are childhood buddies. They're from the same hometown (Leitchfield, Ky.)."

Two years earlier, Johnson, Eldredge, Smith and Talbot had been part of an "all-star" recording on the French label, Naxos World, produced by Patrick Isbey and released under the title "Bluegrass: The Little Grasscals, Nashville's Superpickers." The name "Grascals" is related, says Johnson, but not quite as directly as might be assumed.

"The name kind of evolved from that...they were just gonna call it The Nashville Superpickers. A lot of the guys that were singing on that didn't play on it - we're not superpickers, we're not even pickin' on it, so (Isbey) said 'If you come up with something cool, then let me know. If not, that's what we'll call it.'"

"Terry (Eldredge) and I were sitting at my house, with my wife, we were having dinner one night, and we said, 'Let's think of something cool for this thing' because we weren't really crazy about the other title. Terry's a huge Andy Griffith fan, Mayberry and the Andy Griffith show, and we were trying to think of things that would go with that, and I thought of the Little Rascals and I thought, 'Hey, how about the Little Grasscals?' Terry liked the idea, and we took it to Patrick...and he liked it too. We went with two s's on that one, and the main reason this one kind of broke off, obviously, we're not 'little' guys, so we made it 'The Grascals' and did it the one 's' to try not to confuse folks, though we realize it's gonna happen. But it had absolutely no spin-off of that record."

The 13 tracks reflect the Grascals' respect for and devotion to a variety of bluegrass and country themes and - that word, again - connections.

Among the more familiar titles are "Sweet By And By," "Lonely Street," the Travis Tritt hit "Where Corn Don't Grow" and a pair of tunes by a father, Red Allen ("Teardrops In My Eyes") and his son, Harley ("Me and John and Paul"). That particular circumstance just sort of happened, though, says Johnson.

"There was no intention at making a connection. Harley just wrote a great song, we just like his songs. All of his songs are just incredible."

"Likewise, his dad is just a bluegrass legend. I think it's obvious on the record that we're huge Osborne Brothers fans. (Red) played with the Osbornes for years, and out of a great combination, it was just one of our favorite traditional songs."

"When we started sitting down and listening to songs, we wanted to find the ones that weren't over-recorded and had to be really tasteful about picking out Osborne Brothers songs because you're not going to match them, and we realized that...So that's where the Red Allen song actually came from. We're huge fans of Red's, but obviously, he was in the Osborne Brothers at the time, and it's just a great song from the great stuff they did. We wanted to make sure we put a spin on a great traditional bluegrass (song)."

"Me and John and Paul," a ballad of childhood friendship and support enduring throughout the years, was a song that fit naturally with what the band was all about.

"The cool thing is, Harley wrote pretty much a country song with bluegrass instruments, and we love that song as well."

All six Grascals come from more or less similar cultural and musical backgrounds. For Johnson, home was Milan, Ind., the home stomping grounds of the Boys From Indiana, the legendary band headed by mandolin player Aubrey Holt for many years before he retired and folded the band in the mid-1990s.

A stint early in his career with the band provided a big boost in Johnson's fortunes.

"My brother, Brad, was a huge bluegrass fan, and the only reason I got into bluegrass. I was a bluegrass fan, but nowhere near what he was. He passed away at 20 years old, and I was 18. When my brother passed away in (an) accident, I got all his records that would remind me of him, and most of the records were the Osborne Brothers records, and the other set of records was the Boys From Indiana."

"He was friends with Jerry Holt, the bass player, (Aubrey's) son. They were best friends, and that's how I got connected with them. I listened to all their songs and didn't realize, under their music, I loved it. However my life developed, people would hear me in college and say, 'you sound just like them guys.' For some reason, I went from engineering to a bluegrass singer. I took the plunge and went for it, and it led me down here."

The close proximity to an artist of Holt's stature left a lasting impression.

"That's where I started a lot of my songwriting. I'd be on the bus with him, and he'd be writing a song in the back of the bus. Obviously, the first ones I wrote would be pretty generic, but watching him do that and then perform them onstage and getting the big standing ovation and people clapping for him off something that came out of his head inspired me a lot to write music."

As Dolly finishes up her touring schedule, the Grascals can't wait to get out on the road on their own.

"We're looking forward to getting out and doing the bluegrass festivals, gettin' to be with all the folks because basically, everybody pretty much knows a lot of the guys in our group, from playing with The Sidemen and different bands. The great thing about this is, now we're our own artists, we are the actual group as the artists...we're all part of the ownership of the band, introducing ourselves as leaders and not sidemen, and hopefully that'll go over well."