"That song hits home," says bluegrass stalwart James King, 43, as he talks about "Thirty Years Of Farming," the title track from the newest release - his fourth - on Rounder Records.

While "Thirty Years Of Farming" is a trademark King treatment of a song that tells a sad story, the Virginia native and resident is anything but downbeat about his career and about the business of bluegrass.

King is also celebrating the recent release on Rebel of the third Longview release, "Lessons In Stone," a project that once again teams him up with Dudley Connell, Joe Mullins, Don Rigsby, Glen Duncan and Marshall Wilborn, after two discs having come out on Rounder.

Still, "Thirty Years..." strikes some sad chords, chronicling the heartache and despair of losing the land and livelihood that has sustained families through generations. It's a subject that resonates strongly with him.

"I know a bunch of farmers raised around me. Bunch of apple farmers, bunch of peach farmers, tomato farmers, tobacco farmers, and I've watched them lose those farms...here lately they've been losing them left and right."

Although it's a familiar American story these days, the song comes from the pen of Canadian roots artist Fred Eaglesmith, and King readily acknowledges not having known of Eaglesmith previously.

"I was in Canada about five years ago, and this guy invited me over to this campsite. He said, 'Have you ever heard 'Thirty Years of Farming' by a guy by the name of Fred Eaglesmith?' I said no, so he said 'I'm gonna give you a CD, take it home, and listen to it.' I brought it home, (listened to it and thought)...man, that would be a good bluegrass song. So I told (Rounder exec) Ken Irwin about it...we didn't talk much more about it, and then Ken called me one day and said, 'You still got that CD?...we need to do that.'"

As is often the case, though, the business of living sometimes causes the best of ideas to be moved to the back burner, and King wrestled with the idea of whether or not to record the song at all, let alone as the title track that is, until some good advice came from the home front.

"My wife came up with several of these songs on this new record...She's really responsible for 'Thirty Years of Farming,' making me do it. I was going to do it, then it got down to, I didn't know if I was going to do it, and she said I better do (it) if I had any sense."

With sentimental and often mournful tunes in his repertoire like "Thirty Years Of Farming" as well as "These Old Pictures" and "Bed By The Window" (the title tracks of two of his previous Rounder discs), many of his fans meeting him for the first time might expect King to be as forlorn and, well, lonesome as he sings, but in fact, he's an outgoing, optimistic sort who's thrilled to be able to make a living singing and playing bluegrass. He acknowledges his fondness for songs of heartache and sadness and says it's just what comes best to him - though he didn't realize it at first.

"It comes natural to me, I didn't know I could do that until 'These Old Pictures' came out. I didn't really know that that was my purpose. I'd always sung sad Stanley songs, but I never knew...For instance, I was in Elizabeth, Pa. one night, opening the show for Doyle (Lawson), and 'These Old Pictures' had just come out. It had been out about three months, and I was singin' it and was about halfway through it. There was seven or eight women out in the audience just in tears and men too. I said, 'Wait a minute, I'm doing something right.'"

Part of that talent for heart-wrenching singing would seem almost to be a heritage of his upbringing. Born in Martinsville, James King was raised in Cana, Va., in the heart of the Virginia-North Carolina borderlands that, regardless of what anyone in Nashville might say, are the true cradle of country music. Not far away is Bristol, where in 1927 Ralph Peer brought Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family (whose Maces Spring home is also nearby) to the attention of the world, and a wealth of bluegrass and old time music talent has come out of the Galax-Mount Airy region, people like James' father, Jim, and his uncle, Joe Edd King. And, of course, James himself.

A little farther to the west are the Clinch Mountain homelands of the Stanley Brothers.

Ask him why that part of the country has been home to so many influential pickers and singers, and he chuckles.

"I just believe it was in the water. I mean, there's a ton of musicians that come out of that neck of the woods. But when I grew up, I grew right into it. My father, my uncle, everybody played bluegrass music. It was big, you know, and when I was 10 years old, I done the same thing, and when I got 16, I really got serious about it. I heard the Stanley Brothers for the first time, and paid close attention. It was about 1974, it's been about 30 years, I guess...and I'm still hooked on the Stanley Brothers."

It was Carter Stanley's singing, especially, that captured him, although King was only 8 at the time of Carter's passing in 1966. Ralph Stanley continued (and continues) to be an idol. Through his teenage years King worked on his singing and guitar playing, all the while envisioning the day when he could support himself as a full-time musician. It was a dream that was still nearly two decades away, but a major step toward that day came when he met banjo player Ted Lundy, a Galax native who had moved to Delaware and founded the Southern Mountain Boys, a band whose influence continues to be felt more than 20 years after Lundy's passing.

"Ted was a big influence on me...My uncle, Joe Edd King, and my father, Jim King, and my cousin named Otto King and Beverly Davis all decided they were gonna go to Delaware in the winter of 1966 to play music, and they ended up going to Ted Lundy's house. Beverly knew Ted because Beverly was from Galax, same town Ted was from...and then Ted called my uncle to come back up in '67, and he stayed like two years with Ted, played the fiddle with him, and that's how I became acquainted with Ted. When my uncle passed away in a car accident in '75, Ted came to the ' funeral and told me if I ever got tired of Cana, Va., to come to Delaware, and when I got to Delaware, Ted's two sons (Bob and T.J., both now with the Southern Grass, led by Ted's former bandmate Bob Paisley) who I had met when we were kids...they were pickin' music, and in 1980 they put me in a band, and I really buckled down and studied Ted's music really close."

After a stint in the Marine Corps, King lived in New York City for a time before returning to Delaware to play in a band with Bob and T. J. Lundy, while working as a furniture refinisher to keep the bill collectors at bay.

While at the Delaware Bluegrass Festival (now known as Delaware Valley) in 1979, he met another key figure in his career, the legendary Baltimore-Washington area bluegrass DJ, Ray Davis. Impressed with King's style, Davis hooked him up with Ralph Stanley for a couple of albums on Davis' Wango label, as well as a solo album in 1988, "James King Sings Cold, Cold World."

Still, the breakthrough he longed for remained elusive, seemingly always just around the next corner.

He turned the final corner in 1992, after Dudley Connell recommended him to Ken Irwin as someone Rounder should pursue. At the time, Connell was still with the Johnson Mountain Boys, Rounder's bluegrass standard-bearer for more than a decade, and King had approached him about singing tenor on an upcoming project.

That album turned out to be "These Old Pictures," and the startling combination of King's husky baritone with Connell's ringing tenor caught the bluegrass faithful by surprise. The album, and its followup, "Lonesome And Then Some" were critically acclaimed, and King was suddenly in demand on the festival circuit.

"Dudley has helped me a lot, (he) agreed to do the first Rounder solo of mine, and he sang tenor on that one, and he also sang tenor on 'Lonesome And Then Some', and we used four of the Johnson Mountain Boys on both recordings."

With the Longview recordings, of course, he and Connell have continued to have the opportunity to sing together, and the addition of the others - especially Rigsby - has made it a sound that bluegrass audiences can't get enough of. King remembers how it all started.

"We were in Denton, N.C. in '94, (playing) live for Rounder. Ken (Irwin) wanted to hear the '50s stacked harmony like the Stanleys done it years ago. He wanted me to sing the lead, and he wanted Dudley to sing tenor, and he wanted Don to sing the high baritone. We did a chorus of 'The Angels Are Singing In Heaven,' and it absolutely raised my hair up on the back of my head. I mean, when you chill yourself, you got to be doing something right. It just flipped me out, and Ken, you know, he just had to have it on record."

"Lessons In Stone," the new chapter in the Longview saga features James on four of the dozen tracks. Called by many a "bluegrass supergroup," King is quick to credit the others for making Longview work, particularly Connell and Mullins.

"Dudley and Joe were in charge, Glen (Duncan) threw in a few songs, Don threw in a few songs, but Dudley and Joe basically put together 2 CDs of 30 songs each, and when we got to the studio, we started breaking them down, and Joe Mullins has the knack of pickin' out the right song for the right singer. He picked out my four, and he picked out four good ones for me. I'm happy to be part of it, and they found me what I could do best."

King is a busy man these days, and he's not working in any furniture shops. Florida, California and Canada are all on the tour schedule, some 175 or so dates in all this year. The success of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" has been a welcome added plus, not only for the careers of those who took part in the film - Alison Krauss, Dan Tyminski and the venerable Ralph Stanley - but King says that he's seeing the "trickle down" at his shows, too. Ever the optimist, he sees it all as the dawn of a new era for bluegrass and country music.

"I'm just glad to be in bluegrass music, and I'm glad to see it prospering like it's prospering. It's gonna be a bigger music than it's ever been. I told Ken one time, I believe it's gonna save Nashville, Tenn. Ken said, 'You're thinking too big.' I don't think I'm thinking too big, ('O Brother') sold four million copies. The other country music industry up there has turned its back on the old timers...I don't know what they're doing out there. But bluegrass is big in Nashville right now, and I just feel that bluegrass and Nashville are going to go together well, and it will be a whole lot better than it ever was.