With the release of their 10th album, "The Best Durn Ride," IIIrd Tyme Out's lead vocalist and guitarist, 40-year old Russell Moore, reflects from his Georgia home that the 13 years since the band's formation in 1991 have been a pretty good ride as well.

Though he and bassist Ray Deaton, 50, are the sole remaining members of the original quintet, the band's remarkable stability through the years has allowed them to achieve and maintain a distinctive vocal and instrumental sound that has garnered numerous individual and group awards.PMoore himself is a multiple-time IBMA Male Vocalist of the Year, and the band is almost perennial Vocal Group of the Year winners. Where some bands are driven by the personal vision of a single, central person, Moore says the success of IIIrd Tyme Out relates directly to a philosophy of letting each band member contribute in their own best way.

We've never asked anybody in the group to play a certain way or to emulate anybody. We want the individual talent of everybody in the band to come through as they see fit. We want them to create something from inside themselves, instead of trying to emulate or be just like somebody else. I think you have parameters that you work through, and you can work with all of that without having to sound exactly like somebody else. Be an individual, but at the same time, within the group sense, play within the song, within whatever's going on within the song. I think everybody who's ever been here has done a really good job with that."

After spending most of the '80s learning the trade under the tutelage of master bluegrass showman Doyle Lawson, Moore, Deaton and a fellow band mate, fiddler Mike Hartgrove decided to strike out on their own.

Rounding out that original lineup was banjo player Terry Baucom (yet another Lawson alum) and mandolinist Alan Bibey.

Choosing a name for the new band turned out to be one of the hardest parts.

"We really didn't want to put anybody's name out in front, because we all wanted to be equals in the partnership. We were looking at road signs, we were looking in dictionaries, we were doing anything we could to try and come up with a name for the band. I asked Ray, 'What do you think about the name 'Third Time Out'? He said, 'Where'd that come from?' I said, 'You know, this is your third professional bluegrass group to be associated with. It's my third professional bluegrass group, and it's also Mike Hartgrove's. So, this is kind of our third time to venture out in the bluegrass world, maybe the third time will be a charm. He said, 'Man, I like that,' so basically, that's where that came from."

The Roman numeral and substitution of 'y' for 'i' in 'Tyme' was, he admits, "just something to catch your eye, and make you look, and hopefully the name would stick in your mind."

Leaving the relative safety of working for a high-profile, legendary figure like Lawson was daunting, at first.

"There's a security (consideration) when you're working for somebody else, when they're telling you what you need to do and how you need to do it and what songs you're gonna sing, and you make a living doing it, and that's well and good too. But as an artist, you need to be creative, and I think that has come into play quite a bit since 1991, when we started this group."

"We've been able to search inside of ourselves more and bring those kinds of talents to the forefront. I don't think that I'd change anything that we've done thus far. I really don't. We try to find the material for the band that best represents what we're trying to do and present it to the fans and the people in the best way that we can...it's a fun thing for all of us, I think, to be able to expand on individual talents and bring it all together as a unit and present it to everybody. It's a lot of fun. It really is."

The prime lesson they soon discovered that Lawson had ingrained in them was that, while the woods are full of talented musicians and performers, the successful ones are the ones who work the hardest.

"Doyle is a wonderful teacher, a really hard worker, a wonderful musician, arranger...I mean, you have no doubt when you go watch one of his shows, what you're gonna get. It's always top-notch. And those things were passed on along to us, whether he was really trying to pass them down or it just came second nature from being there so long."

"Those things were definitely passed down - the good work habits. They're wonderful. You can't do without them. If you want to compete in today's bluegrass, you gotta work hard. You have to put your time and effort into it...That's the root of a big tree. You've got to have the hard work. You've got to have great roots. He definitely does, and those things were passed on along to us while we were there, just the work ethic and the work habits."

Baucom and Bibey eventually moved on, their spots seamlessly filled for several years by Steve Dilling (banjo) and Wayne Benson (mandolin, who has departed since the release of "Best Durn Ride," replaced by Alan Perdue).

Around the time of their 2002 gospel release "Singing On Streets Of Gold," (released on their own label after an eight-year run with Rounder) Hartgrove also left, and as Moore relates, his replacement came as something of a surprise in the person of Greg Luck, known to most bluegrass fans as a standout guitarist and lead singer with J. D. Crowe's New South. Having grown up with Luck in the same neck of North Carolina, Benson and Dilling eagerly recommended him, but Moore acknowledges that he and Deaton were a bit skeptical at first.

"Ray and I looked at each other and said, 'Greg Luck? He's a guitar player...what are you talking about?'"

For Luck, it turned out to be a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

"At the time, we were actually recording some stuff with him, with Mike Hartgrove on fiddle, at (Luck's) studio, we were actually recording 'Singing On Streets of Gold', the all-gospel recording. It was during that time that Mike decided he was going to leave the band. So, here comes Greg. We went up there to do some recording and audition him at the same time. About 30 minutes later, we looked at him and said, 'Man, if you want the gig, it's yours. You're absolutely blowin' us away,' - never knew that he played fiddle like that. He said, 'Man, that's all I ever aspired to do...to play fiddle in a bluegrass band...that's what I want to do, but nobody (would) really give me a chance.'"

Far from feeling threatened with the presence of another solid lead singer in the band, Moore is almost giddy at the thought of new vocal territory to be explored, while still retaining the band's essential all-for-one, one-for-all character.

"It's a great luxury to have another great lead vocalist in the band. I've been the primary lead vocalist for 11, 12 years, and to have Greg in there, it really gives us a new dimension to the band, having that baritone-style lead vocal that I can even sing tenor to, which is something we haven't had in the past. So, it's a wonderful thing, and I'm enjoying the heck out of it...We work as a team. That's the bottom line. If somebody gets to where they're down and can't make it, or whatever, then the rest of us step up and make it happen. I think that's one aspect of it that keeps us focused on trying to find people to replace whoever might be leaving, to make sure that they can do some vocal parts, as well as being multi-instrumentalists."

"The Best Durn Ride" features not only standout material like Becky Buller's "Rest My Weary Feet" and Moore's own "Sarasee," written about one of the band's most loyal and most special fans, but the whole structure and concept of the album was formed around David Noris' title track about a hobo waiting to jump aboard that last, final boxcar.

"I love the story, how somebody can not be the most wealthy person in the world, but they're always lending a hand to somebody, trying to help out, trying to do something. I love that aspect of the story, of the song. As far as being the title track, we were looking for something, some kind of a concept - a cover, a title track and all - and that worked out just great. 'The Best Durn Ride', the connotations of somebody feeling that way, and the fact that they're a hobo and don't have anything but the shirt on their back, really. But 'The Best Durn Ride', to them, is being free and being in this boxcar, and just seeing the world, and even having the overtones of...the feeling when he catches that last great train to glory, and he leaves this world and everything that goes along with it. You know, everything's gonna be even better when he takes that last great ride to glory. It just struck a chord with me."

In what turned out to be a bittersweet touch to the album's coming together, they asked Ray's father, "Bucker" Deaton to pose in a boxcar door for the cover photo. Sadly, Bucker passed on before the album hit the shelves, and Moore speaks fondly of him almost as a second father of his own.

"He was the sort of guy who could pick up a basketball and bet you he'd hit 28 of 30 free throws. Then he'd go ahead and hit all 30," Moore laughs. "I really miss him."

Looking down the road, the ride is still too durn good for Russell Moore, Ray Deaton and the rest of IIIrd Tyme Out to even think about giving it up.

"We're having a great time. I would like to see at least another 13 years out of IIIrd Tyme Out. I feel like I've got a lot to offer. Even though I'm 40 years old, I look at other people that are older than I am still out here beatin' up and down the road and excitin' audiences and just having a great time, and that's what I want to see myself doing in another 15, 20, 25 years, to still be able to get that enthusiasm out of it like they do."