Just a few weeks short of his 61st birthday, bluegrass icon Doyle Lawson eagerly anticipates the release of yet another in a long series of sterling releases since forming his own band, Quicksilver, more than a quarter-century ago.

The title, "You Gotta Dig A Little Deeper," reflects his continuing drive to meet or exceed not only the musical excellence that bluegrass audiences have come to expect, but also the exacting standards he has imposed on himself over more than four decades in the business.

On top of that, the album represents his debut on the Rounder label.

"I'd been with Sugar Hill a larger part of the recording since I put my group together, but I just reached the point where things didn't seem to be happening like I expected, and I wanted to just take a little more control of my destiny, so I decided to leave and maybe resurrect my SSK label, but...when you do things like that as an artist, you've become a record company, whether you want to be or not, and that entails a lot more work, and you've got to look to do it properly and adequately. You really have to look to take on more personnel just to start taking care of a record company. "

"So, we just started to talk to Rounder for a while, and we took our time about reaching an agreement that we felt would be workable for both of us, and I decided to go that way. I think that Rounder is, in my belief, certainly the most energetic independent label that I can think of right now, especially when it comes to acoustic music and bluegrass music. I just felt like that at this point in my career, it would be a good partnership to have, and they seem really thrilled that we were able to work out an arrangement, and I'm already thinking that things are really looking good."

As he has throughout most of his career, Lawson self-produced, and experience has taught him that it's a fine line between being the performer and being the producer.

"You just about have to (maintain a dual role), and I've also remarked that it's probably harder to produce yourself than it is somebody else. I've not done a lot of producing other people simply because I don't have the time, but I know that it's really, really hard when you're producing yourself because, number one, you're probably at your peak as far as critiquing anything, you know. We often say...that we're our worst critics. And I think we're harder on ourselves than anyone else could ever be, and I know that I am."

"But when you do your own thing, you're not only trying to measure ' up to yourself and meet your expectations, but you're also aware that people have come to expect a certain standard of recording and level of excellence, if you would put it that way, and I guess that what I'm ever mindful of is the fact that I don't dare let down or even think that I should, but...(when) it meets the level that the prior ones have done, you know that you've not let down on the job or taken things for granted."

Lawson knows better than most that turnover, especially in bluegrass, is an inevitability for a bandleader, but heading into the new album and for the last few years on stage, he's had one of his most stable periods.

In fact, the most recent addition to the band is an old hand, banjo player Terry Baucom, a member of the original 1979 Quicksilver lineup who returned in 2003. It has been a delight to have Baucom's knowledge and experience to draw on again, according to Lawson.

"Terry was in on the ground floor, and it was, for us, just business as usual. I know what to expect from Terry, I never have to doubt what I'm going to get from his performance, be it vocals or his wonderful banjo playing. No, we just went at it like we've done in the past because I knew he was going to give me the best that he had."

Rounding out the current band (Lawson himself is, of course, among the pre-eminent mandolin pickers in the music) is a trio whose talents Lawson truly treasures.

"(Bassist) Barry Scott's been here about eight and a half years, Jamie Dailey (guitar) about six and a half years, Jesse Stockman three years, and of course, Terry's working on two years." He lets out a chuckle and adds, "Hey, it might all blow up tomorrow, but right now, it's pretty stable."

"You have to be prepared, and you hope the people you have in place will stay forever, but they can decide that at any given time that somebody's gonna get restless and decide to move on for whatever reason. You wish them the best, and you look around and try to find somebody to put in that slot, and keep going."

Though known and revered as much for his gospel output, the new disc is a new adventure in straight-ahead, driving bluegrass and searching for interesting material not previously thought of as "bluegrass songs" has also been a hallmark of the Lawson sound.

"If it's a good song, you give it your treatment...Thirty years ago, J. D. Crowe and I were doing Fats Domino stuff like 'I'm Walkin'' and Roy Hamilton's 'You Can Have Her,' which were rock-and-roll songs, but we did it right-down-the-middle, hard-drivin' bluegrass, and the people loved it. I really don't think it matters where the song comes from. It's the way you treat it."

The best example of this on "Dig" is a grassed-up version of the '50s-era Jim Reeves classic "Four Walls."

"Certainly, Jim Reeves gave it the immaculate version in 1957, which is said to have pioneered in the Nashville Sound. I'd heard a few people sing that other than Jim, but nobody had ever done a trio, and I was looking for something that would have harmonies, and the song was from the mid- to late-'50s. I wanted to give it what I call that little harder-edged '50s bluegrass sound, and that's kind of what we came up with."

Lawson and band are perennial IBMA award nominees for Entertainer of the Year (though longtime friend and colleague Del McCoury seems to have a lock on it in recent years), and it's interesting to note that after IIIrd Tyme Out, a band with direct Quicksilver roots won Vocal Group of the Year from 1994 through 2000, Lawson and Quicksilver have claimed the award the last four years, almost as if to remind the youngsters that the master is still to be reckoned with.

And, former protégés like IIIrd Tyme Out's Russell Moore and Mountain Heart's Steve Gulley readily acknowledge that the schooling they received from Lawson was pivotal in their own careers. For his own part, Lawson recognizes and relishes the fruits of his teachings.

"I do see the guys who have come through here and gone on to establish other bands or be in other groups, I see that discipline that I passed along, I see that in those groups that have been able to rise to the top. There's a certain discipline about them, and easily I can recognize that."

Apart from the personal satisfaction of watching his own musical progeny go out and flourish on their own, he keenly feels that part of the debt he owes to the music and to those who taught him is to simply pass the wisdom on in his turn.

"I have had the good fortune my entire professional career to work with some of the elite professional musicians, starting with Jimmy Martin, of course, when I was a young man, when I was 18 years old, and in my early twenties, I wound up in Kentucky working in the same group with J. D. Crowe, who had worked for Jimmy, so I guess my Jimmy Martin education just kind of continued going after I had left Jimmy because Crowe and I, we were in the same school. We came from the same school of music, you know."

Lawson's reputation was further enhanced during his tenure in the post-John Duffey Country Gentlemen, but as a large a presence as Duffey was, the character of the Gents always revolved around another of Lawson's heroes and mentors.

"Then, I went over with the Country Gentlemen and the great Charlie Waller, the legendary voice of Charlie...it was there that I really started to mature as an entertainer."

"They had this entertainment part of them...all four of us, we all had these little routines and skits that we worked up, but it was entertaining. So all those years, 16 years prior to me putting my own group together, I collected all this experience and things that I thought would be of use, I kept inside me, I tucked it away for future reference, so to speak."

"You know, the music doesn't stop with Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, and it won't stop with IIIrd Tyme Out or Mountain Heart or any of the new groups. It must go on, and it must grow. So one way it will help it to grow is to pass along some of the wisdom you've acquired, and to share some of that with the younger people, so the music can not only grow, but stay in step with today's times."

Martin currently is locked in a struggle with cancer, and Lawson was deeply saddened by Waller's passing last August, but understands that time and the music must march on even as we bid farewell to those who have shown - or, in the case of bluegrass, actually built the road ahead.

"We all have our heroes. We all have our mentors who influenced us, and you can probably see a little bit of who we were influenced by in our music, which I think is good. But, you don't want to be a carbon copy...I came along, and I took a lot of things that I had been influenced by over the years, but another dimension of my music that was probably not as evident as in some of the other guys is the gospel influence that I had and the gospel music in general."

"I grew up with gospel music, and my father having sung in an a cappella gospel quartet pretty near all my life, and he was still singing when I left home, and I was heavily influenced with that. I took a lot of material I'd heard him sing, put music to it and made it bluegrass."

"As the page turns...when it's time for J.D. and Larry (Sparks) and myself, and Del McCoury and guys like that to step down, then you'll turn the page and have guys like IIIrd Tyme Out and Mountain Heart and people like that, and I think it's just a page, a chapter in the Big Book of Bluegrass."