Being a maverick isn't that hard. Nor is being a Maverick. At least that's how Robert Reynolds, bassist for the edgy, sometimes country, band The Mavericks, sees the quartet circa 1998.

"It's unusual to be married to a group like this, and we have our private lives," says Reynolds, husband of Trisha Yearwood. "Our marriages, children, what have you. In my case, I've got on one hand an entertainer and a band I'm married to. I probably suffer from multiple personality syndrome."

The latter marriage - as a member of The Mavericks - is not one based on the been there, done that syndrome.

Nope, this is a band - lead singer Raul Malo, drummer Paul Deakin, lead guitarist Nick Kane and Reynolds - that is content to change musical directions as it ages.

On its first major label album, "From Hell to Paradise," the Miami-bred band clearly honed a country sound. That continued with "What a Crying Shame" in 1994, with a strong tilt by Malo to Roy Orbison vocally.

But then the changes started in earnest with "Music For All Occasions" from late 1995. Yeah, it maintained a country vibe, but there was a lounge music feel, perhaps best indicated by including a duet with Yearwood, "Something Stupid."

Which brings us to "Trampoline." An aptly titled disc.

"This record is all over the place," says Reynolds in an interview from his Hendersonville, Tenn. home.

The 13-track, 51-minute recording runs the gamut from a Latin beat (the lead off "Dance the Night Away" and "Melbourne Mambo") to country ("I Should Know" and "Someone to Tell Her") to blues ("Tell Me Why") to gospel ("Save a Prayer").

This wasn't your typical Nashville recording.

For starters, the album was pretty much a live studio recording.

And what a scene that was with lots of friends hanging around at all hours. But the disc only took about one week to record.

"If you hear the band and an orchestra and a voice, that's how it went down," says Reynolds in an earlier interview from Lake Placid, N.Y. where he sandwiched bobsledding and skiing in between opening for Tim McGraw.

"We used an extremely big room in Nashville. We put the orchestra in with the band. We put in the mikes and let it go. We kept a lot of the first vocals and so forth. It's an extremely old approach to recording. It worked very well for us."

"The recording process was very much a circus, and it was fun. It was a pursued pleasure."

If expecting a straight ahead country record, forget about it.

"A lot of it feels pretty natural," Reynolds says of the musical direction, adding, "The paths we take feel quite natural. Whether the music strikes you as something you like, you love or hate, that's something out of my hands."

"Going along in Miami, we had a certain rootsy kind of elements of country," says Reynolds. "Next thing you know, we wanted to come up to Nashville. Next thing we are a full country act. Suddenly, you get a little notoriety in country music for our work, and how did we stumble upon that?"

While the debut was a commercial stinker, but critically acclaimed, the band took home the Country Music Association award for vocal group of the year in 1995 after "...Crying Shame."

Reynolds indicates the group almost has a need to be musical chameleons.

"When you think someone has you figured out, you express yourself in other sounds and interests that you have and before you know it, you're off on another tangent, another path," says Reynolds. "It all feels just very naturally walked down these paths and these roads."

To some extent, what turns out on disc is heavily connected to what is going on inside Malo's head since he is the primary songwriter.

He expresses the initial ideas, according to Reynolds, puts the songs on tape as demos.

But Reynolds made it clear it wasn't Malo calling the shots for the whole band.

"As a credit to Raul again, when he comes to home base, he always comes in with 'I got this on my mind. What do you think? He genuinely seems to mean the 'what do you think?' He looks to the group fingerprint. He wants the group to put its final stamp on it."

Of course, not everything Malo brings to the table makes it on the silver platter, but he has a high percentage.

"His ratio is really, more like an 80-percent kind of guy," says Reynolds. "He knows how to express through melody and lyric the voice of The Mavericks. He is after all the lead singer of the group. There are discussions on occasion particularly when you come to making a record...It seems when there is a decision to be made, the basic democracy has always been there for us. It's a real nice, solid structure. It really works well."

While most labels put their artist's feet to the fire, MCA has given The Mavs a free rein.

"We were always treated differently than the staple Nashville act. What has become the norm for contemporary country music has not been necessarily the norm for The Mavericks."

"For the past couple of records, we've been allowed to bring it in after the music was done. With us, there's been kind of a carte blanche thing to make the records we make."

"We giggle how outrageous it is," Reynolds says.

But while clearly enjoying the music the band is making, will its audience be left at the gate?

"As a band, we are making music performing music," Reynolds says. "We're doing this all for pleasure for our own and for the enjoyment of others, our audience, whether it be a listening audience, a concert audience. We are simply making music for the pleasure of music."

"We have felt over the past few years very bogged down with the labelling that goes on in music today," he says. "It becomes very confining. We are no less the real true lovers of country music than we were 8 years ago or 12 or 15."

"Our having kind of jumped the fence a bit on this record is challenging music lovers to go with something that feels good if you like what we're doing, don't question it. If you love country music, don't be such certain that country music hasn't had a great influence on the stuff we're doing."

Reynolds cited Buck Owens influence on earlier records. "This time, it's Buck Owens with a dose of Herb Alpert. This record reflects the influence of so many different types of artists, and we're just putting it in all into one record."

"Trampoline" isn't the only recent disc from The Mavs. The only problem is that you're going to have to go north of the border to pick up "It's now! It's live!" a seven-song live disc recorded in Toronto and Ottawa and released last fall.

"It's a project that we did to say so long to last several years of touring and take a break," says Reynolds. "It's creating unusual music for the collector's market. It wasn't necessarily released to become the next 'Frampton Comes Alive.' It was more like something for the fans that are hard core fans."

The lively set, which almost didn't happen due to paperwork, mechanical and weather problems, includes three hits and a version of Merle Haggard's "(Tonight) The Bottle Let Me Down" courtesy of longtime sideman and keyboard specialist Jerry Dale McFadden.

It also marked the beginning of a hiatus for the band.

Members had their own side projects in 1997.

For Malo, that meant playing occasional big band gigs in Nashville.

Reynolds acted out on his Buddy Holly and rock impulses getting together with bands called The Everydays and Swag.

The former played a half a dozen gigs, including Crystal Lake, Iowa, the site of the Day the Music Died and Lubbock, Texas, Holly's hometown.

The ensemble played "very traditional renditions of Buddy Holly music. We did it with a great true love for the music."

Band members included Kim Richey, Mandy Barnett and Pat DiNizio, lead singer of The Smithereens. A core band was joined bysingers coming up to share a number or two.

"That was really really important to me. They were really special gigs. It was about his music and how it effected me personally."

Deakin joined Reynolds in Swag when he was available or else Wilco's Ken Coomer would pound away. Cheap Trick mainstay Tom Petersson also was a member. It didn't give me everything I still look for. We still intend to do some work."

Reynolds also wrote songs, contributing a few to Cheap Trick's last disc.

"All of that was all for our individual selves," Reynolds says of last year. "Now, '98-'99 looks like it is going to be important years for the entity that is going to be The Mavericks."

While there had been rumors last year about a possible break-up of The Mavs, Reynolds didn't see that on the horizon.

"Not at this point have I really felt that. It's one of those things you see as the ultimate as where most bands do go. If you use history as any kind of roadmap, you already get to see where most groups eventually end up. That is spending more time on other projects or more time away from that project. There are some exceptions to the rule."

"For the time we took off, it was a move of self-preservation, it was so we didn't burn out. It proved to be valuable."

"What I've always felt is we haven't done everything we wanted to do. Obviously, we had this record yet to do. We have some stuff in us that's for the future. This record may be the best foot forward for some future years doing Mavericks stuff. I do feel it's inevitable that The Mavericks will have to give ourselves individual time."

"The priority is The Mavericks right now," Reynolds says, adding, "The Mavericks I think for all of us is home base."