Mike Ireland is a happy guy.

And, oddly enough, this will probably comes as something of a surprise to some of his fans, who perhaps have a mental picture of him as mopey, bitter and angry.

Given the evidence, it's easy to understand why. Ireland's 1998 debut, "Learning How to Live," was easily one of the angriest debuts from a country artist in recent memory, even kicking off with a number ("House of Secrets") in which the singer burns down his old house while his ex-wife and her new lover are still inside.

"It's amazing," says Ireland four years after the album's release. "When I look back I think,'Wow, I was really angry.'"

"A lot of people seem surprised that I'm as happy as I am. I guess that's inevitable when your entire record is about heartache, loss, anger and revenge. I think, like most people, sometimes I'm depressed, and sometimes I'm happy. For me, writing songs is therapy."

Interviewed at the Boston home of his manager, Ireland, in fact, strikes one as friendly, talkative, articulate and, yes, happy. With good reason; his excellent second album, "Try Again," was released in May on the Boston-based Ashmont label. In addition, he's made several appearances on the Grand Ole Opry over the past three years, and his singing and songwriting are as highly regarded as any artist working in country music today.

A longtime resident of Kansas City, Mo., his previous band -- The Starkweathers -- had released an EP and a few singles and had just signed with the Seattle-based SubPop label in 1995 when Ireland discovered that his wife and the band's vocalist, Richard Smith, were having an affair, predictably resulting in the group's demise.

To this day, Ireland remains uncertain whether the woman who inspired much of his first album has actually heard it.

"Nobody's ever asked me that. It's the weirdest thing. I have not spoken to her in, like, five years. Not out of any big avoidance thing. We live in the same town, and we live within probably five miles of one another. But in all that time I have not ended up crossing paths with her. I'd be curious. So much of the music on there -- I think -- is not a detailed list of grievances against her: 'That bitch! She did this and this and this...' Because that's not how I felt. We were two people who did a lot of things to mess up a relationship. It's easier for me in retrospect to look back and think, 'You know, I could have been a much better husband.'"

Picked up by SubPop -- known for its early '90s signings of bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden -- as a solo act, Ireland poured his heartbreak into a series of songs which would eventually end up on his debut, on which he was accompanied by his new band Holler, featuring two other ex-Starkweathers and rhythm guitarist Dan Mesh.

Ireland's debut garnered excellent reviews, was well-publicized, and he toured heavily in 1998 and '99 to support it. For all that, sales were disappointing, with the album moving about 2,500 copies to date. Four years on, does Ireland think SubPop could have done anything different to promote the album?

"That's such a hard question," says Ireland. "You almost have to question the question. The people who liked it reaaaaalllly liked it (but) I don't know that it deserved to sell better than anything else. Why (didn't) 10-million people feel that way? I don't know. Maybe having 45 minutes of a bummer record isn't everybody's cup of tea."

"I'm not sure what I'm doing falls into a real marketable category. SubPop did a lot to push it. They got the word out, they got ads out, and the publicity people they hired were fantastic. It's as mysterious to me as to anybody else. Maybe it sold to exactly who it needed to sell to."

Although it was reported initially that Ireland had been dropped by SubPop the following year in the aftermath of the album's weak sales, Ireland states that he actually left the label on his own.

"I, for better or for worse, walked away from them. They wanted to make another record, and they told me they wanted me to stay. Thank God, they didn't actually threaten (me) or anything."

Though sometimes painted as hidebound and calcified, the Opry has gone out of its way to reach out to alt.-country acts like Gillian Welch, Dale Watson and Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys to a far greater degree than has country radio.

Oddly enough, Ireland was invited to appear on the Opry around the same time he left SubPop; an irony that hasn't escaped his notice. In all, Ireland has made about a half-dozen appearances with the venerable country music institution over the past three years, with more to come.

"It was a thrill. (I had) the feeling that it was a favor from someone. The more encouraging part of it was that they actually asked me back. Pete Fisher, the guy who does the booking, has been so supportive (and) so nice. He'll call and say, 'When are you going to be coming down?'"

"What (Fisher) has done has simply been to acknowledge that the Opry, like it's always done, has to bring in old and new singers, and then try to give people an idea of all of the different things that are out there. For God's sake, Porter Wagoner brought James Brown to the Opry."

"I think Pete Fisher sees that there's a spectrum of music that includes the traditional Opry stars that includes Little Jimmy Dickens, Porter Wagoner (and) Bill Anderson, and they can share the stage with people who are giant country stars now. And they can share the stage with people who are future Opry stars, or people who are simply in the world of country music. It's such a giant realm of music it seems weird to want to cut off a part of it."

Ireland's latest, "Try Again," will sound like familiar territory to fans of the first album. Former Lovin' Spoonful member Jerry Yester is again handling the string arrangements, giving several numbers the countrypolitan feel that permeated much of the first album.

"Try Again" was recorded at the old pre-Civil War Colt firearms factory in Hartford, Conn., with Dan Mesh held over from the first album, as well as guitar work from John Horton and drums from Spencer Marquart, since replaced by Will Rigby, formerly of '80s college radio icons the dBs.

"We're going to be touring with Will Rigby," says Ireland. "We got all these suggestions, and when I saw his name I said, 'Oh my God! He was the dBs' drummer! I am such a college radio geek!"

"The Colt .45 factory is a marvelous place; marvelous and weird. It has these really long corridors and rickety floors. It was hard to roll a dolly down the hallway to the studio because the floorboards give if there's any weight on the dolly. There's weird piping everywhere, (and) everything looks pre-industrial. I expected there to be ironworks and smoke coming out of the place. You look out the window, and on top is

this strange Russian onion-shaped dome." (a gift to the factory from the Czar)

If there's one major difference between the first album and the new one, it's Ireland's attitude.

Largely -- though not completely -- gone is the bitterness and disappointment of the first record, mostly replaced by a tentative kind of hope, exemplified by numbers like "Tonight" and "I'd Like To."

Though the vast majority of the album's songs have been written in the past four years, the title track dates back further.

"I'm sort of committed to putting an older song of mine on each album. I like that the songs are connected to other places that I've been. I've had (versions of 'Try Again') since the band before The Starkweathers. And we played it in The Starkweathers, and back then, it was an uptempo waltz kind of thing. The more time I spent polishing it, the more it made sense to me. By the time we were done with it I (was saying), 'Yeah! This sounds like a song that this band can play!'"

The album's sole cover is a version of Margaret Ann Rich's "Life's Little Ups and Downs," originally recorded by husband Charlie Rich in 1969 and also a number 4 hit for Ricky Van Shelton in 1991.

"To me, that is just one of the best songs ever. I think about what it's about -- a man who's lost the thing that he attributes to his wife's happiness -- and he continually ruminates about the things that aren't going to happen because of that; the ways that she's going to be hurt. And she keeps coming back to the idea that she's going to be okay with him no matter what happens. She loves him, and he knows that. It's not really a sad song. It's a very tender love song; 'she loves me no matter what.' It's sort of the same guy who sings 'I Take It On Home'; this solid trust in a love partner. I've cried so many times to the Charlie Rich recording of it."

Besides his regular shows with Holler, Ireland also plays solo acoustic shows from time to time, though he admits that he's not entirely comfortable in that format.

"Y'know, I do that really infrequently. I practice guitar pretty much every day, but I don't think I have any natural aptitude. Occasionally I put myself in harm's way and go ahead and commit to a show. I write all the songs on guitar. I'm just not really good at moving between chords. The people that see me play are always amazed that I can sing and play bass at the same time. And I'm frankly always amazed that people can sing and play guitar at the same time."

Ireland makes no bones about his love of the pop-country of his childhood. In fact, during the conversation, Ireland expresses his admiration for numerous strains of pop, from '70s disco (early on in his musical career Ireland played sax in a large funk band) to the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds."

"I think a lot of people have the idea that if pop -- in any form -- touches country music, it's horrible," says Ireland.

"But you know what? All the things I loved when I was little was country music that had pop in it. The things that I was exposed to were like 'Rose Garden' by Lynn Anderson. Which I loved when I was a kid, but if someone had asked me if it was country music, I never would have thought of it that way. It still doesn't strike me as a country record. It strikes me as an incredible record minus any sort of genre description. Charlie Rich's 'The Most Beautiful Girl' does not sound particularly country. It doesn't sound like honky-tonk. It just sounds like a guy singing a song."

"When Anne Murray sings 'Snowbird,' I live. Hank Williams? Neve heard him."