Buddy Miller doesn't sound especially breathless as he talks on the telephone from the Nashville home he shares with his wife, Julie, but if he did, it wouldn't be surprising. After all, Miller wears enough hats ­ singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer ­ that holes in his schedule are guaranteed to be few and far between even under the most relaxed circumstances, and the past couple of years have been anything but that.

That makes the seamlessness of their new, self-titled album all the more remarkable. Though they've collaborated on disc before, "Buddy and Julie Miller" (HighTone) is the first time they've been co-billed.

Ironically, it comes with a CD on which Buddy's contribution was more restricted than it's been in the past; though he sings and plays, most of the songwriting was done by Julie, with whom he shares but one credit.

Miller's busy schedule is the culprit.

"It's a little tiring, but I'm not complaining," he laughs. "I've had a real busy last couple of years, and as much as I wanted to participate, she had all these great songs started already, and I thought well, they'll all fit in really well. It's been sort of a nutty time for me. It's all been relentless."

"The Emmylou (Harris) gig opened up a lot of opportunities and doors for me, and at the same time I got that gig, my first record was coming out, and some people liked that," says Miller, who played guitar for Harris.

"So, there were writing opportunities and producing opportunities, and I'd work with Emmylou on tracks that she was recording, too. And then I played with Steve Earle for about a year, so everything kind of happened at once."

Julie's calendar has been similarly full.

She and Buddy have frequently opened for Harris, and she's appeared on a number of others' recordings, too.

"I like doing it all. The only problem is, I don't like get really good at any of them," Buddy modestly says. "I don't do them all the time, so I kind of get okay at something, and then it's time to move on to something else. But I love it all. I like singing and I like playing. It's all great."

"We just had people asking us when we were going to make a record together."

The two met after Buddy ended up in Austin after playing bluegrass, country rock and psychedelic music around the country. He joined Rick Stein & the Alley Cats, whose female singer was Julie Griffin. A few years later, they moved to New York where they had a regular gig at the Lone Star Cafe.

After personal problems, Julie returned to Texas where she joined a Christian commune. Buddy stayed in New York where he worked with Shawn Colvin among others and eventually married Julie.

The couple headed west where Julie recorded several Christian albums for the Word label.

In Los Angeles, Buddy connected with Jim Lauderdale, joined his band and hooked up with HighTone, which released his first solo album, "Your Love and Other Lies" in 1995.

Julie debuted two years later with "Blue Pony," followed later that year by Buddy's "Poison Love." Buddy released "Cruel Moon" in 1999, the same year Julie released "Broken Things."

"Our music is sort of different from each other. Hers is more rockin', and left to my own, I'm more of just a country player. If I wasn't playing with her or Emmylou, that's what I'd end up doing. So, when we go out and play, it kind of becomes a different thing altogether, and so we thought, let's try a record and see what it sounds like." '

"It's hard for me to switch gears, so this one was a tough one to do. It was just done in our days off, in between tours. The last few days were real tough - it was basically 60 hours, no sleep, because we had to get it done, and my ears get tired. It wasn't really fun. I'll not be able to listen to it for a long time."

Indeed, it seems likely that the album might not have been done at all were it not for the Millers' home studio.

"I've been collecting stuff for the last 15 years or so," he says. "So I just had some gear, and we started doing Julie's music at home first. We realized it sounded pretty good, and people liked the way the records sounded."

"I've just got a bunch of good stuff and just enjoy working at home. I can invite friends over and sit around and play, and hopefully it'll turn into a record."

"We have a real old house that was actually a triplex at one point. When we got it, we opened up the upstairs, moved in there and used the whole downstairs as sort of a studio area. So, it works out good. Fortunately, Julie's way into it. A lot of wives would probably just flip if their husbands wanted to turn the whole house into a studio, but she's into it, and any gear I want to get, she just figures it's great, it works along with what we do."

"We cut the basic tracks live, but we have a strange thing going, especially with this record, because we'd cut a lot of songs that weren't written," Miller laughs. "For instance, Brady Blades, Emmylou's drummer, lives in Sweden, but when we tour, I try to get him over here to play whether we have songs or not. So, we'd have the music for a song that we knew we were going to want to do, but we didn't have the words written, so we'd record the track and then later on finish it up. We do things like that. I'm not against overdubbing ­ everything's a good thing, it just shouldn't be abused."

"I try to keep things simple. And if we do overdub, I try to keep it so it doesn't sound like a huge wall of production. Of course, sometimes if it gets a little late at night or I've had too much coffee, I might have a little more fun than I should, but I try to make it sound sort of like the house."

Miller's seen enough of major label studio recording to know exactly what the advantages are of recording at home. He and/or Julie have had cuts recorded by, among others, Brooks & Dunn, the Dixie Chicks and Lee Ann Womack ­ she recorded two on the multi-platinum "I Hope You Dance" and one on her previous album, "Some Things I Know."

Buddy's also logged a considerable amount of time as a guitar player and harmony vocalist, appearing on albums by everyone from Lauderdale and Lucinda Williams to Womack (with whom Julie also sang), Trisha Yearwood and Rebecca Lynn Howard.

"In Nashville, the way it works is that a song demo gets made, and then they usually try to copy the demo for the record, which is sort of a strange way of going about it. And usually they don't make as good of a version on the record as they do on the demo."

"There's no excuse for that. Some of it is just laziness and no creativity, but then, too, you have a writer who really feels the song, who does a demo the way the song should be felt. And then you've got somebody else coming in who can't think of anything else, so they think well, that sounds good, let's do that."

"When Lee Ann Womack did something that Julie and I did together on one of my records ("Don't Tell Me" on "Some Things I Know"), they didn't lift the arrangements for those songs. She did two of our songs on her new record ­ one song off Julie's record and one off mine ­ and she kind of took them someplace else, which was great. I like to hear that, instead of hearing somebody copy lick for lick what's going on."

"But I don't really know how Americana artists can afford to make records. You don't really have a very big budget, and you can't afford to go into a studio unless you really know what you're doing and get in and out fast. There's really no time to experiment, no time for the creative process."

"It's easy to do those things here at the house. But I'm amazed at just some great records being made in the whole Americana genre, because I know a lot of those records are made on small budgets. Robbie Fulks' last record, that country one ­ oh, man, that's one of my favorite records, and they cut that live. And it was just a great bunch of players who felt the songs."

"So, I try to help out my friends when they're making records, if they want me to work on stuff, or master it or do anything like that. And we make our records at home."

The home-grown approach produced an album with a markedly intimate feel, enhanced by the songs' stripped-down arrangements. The Millers worked with a group of friends that included drummers Blades and Bryan Owings, bassists Rick Plant, former E Street Band member Gary Tallent, Joey Spampinato and Byron House, fiddler Larry Campbell and keyboard player Phil Madeira, but reserved the vocals for themselves, except for a single guest appearance by Harris.

The result is an album of sturdy, straightforward textures, spotlighting Julie's compelling yet accessible songwriting talents and the duo's distinctive harmonies. Though they're modern, they're rooted in the kinds of music Buddy likes to listen to in what little time he has for it.

"I've been listening to stuff with scratches on it," he chuckles. "That's what usually ends up on my player. A lot of old blues, old bluegrass, just a lot of old music. But I listen probably more to old blues than anything else. Country blues and also old Chess Records stuff."

Those sounds find a reflection in songs like "Dirty Water," on which Pop Staples-like guitar vibrato underpins a bitter complaint to a lover. "Baby, you got the kind of love that I can't afford, and I don't have a taste for what's in that glass you poured," Julie sings in her distinctive voice, while a swampy groove propels the song forward.

The album's original songs, including the moving "Rachel," which commemorates the faith of one of the victims of the Columbine High School murders, are complemented by three different, yet equally well-chosen covers: Richard Thompson's "Keep Your Distance," Bob Dylan's "Wallflower" and U "Utah" Phillips' angry, mournful "Rock Salt And Nails."

"We just choose what we like," Buddy says. "We used to sing 'Keep Your Distance' or 'Wall Of Death' or one of those Richard Thompson songs, and I think somebody else is doing 'Wall Of Death,' so we figured, let's do 'Keep Your Distance.' It's a great song."

"'Rock Salt And Nails' is one I've known forever. I probably got it from Flatt & Scruggs (who first recorded the song in 1965), it's been that long. At that point in time, in the late 1960's, I was playing bluegrass. I wasn't good enough to be the guitar player, but I'd play upright bass or sing some harmony and I learned a lot from just hanging around.

"Julie and I have been doing it for 20 or 25 years, on and off - since we've been playing together. We'd do it in our shows as encores or whatever, and it's just something we like singing together, so it was a pretty natural thing. I think her harmonies are just incredible.

"I've got a huge list of songs that I'd love to record, but at this point we've been having good luck with having songs recorded by other people ­ probably a dozen ­ so it's good for us to do that, concentrate on our songs."

"But I've always been a huge songwriter fan ­ a Don Gibson fan, a Leon Payne fan, a Dan Penn fan ­ from both the r&b side and the country side. I remember when I bought the Johnny & Jack record that had 'Poison Love' (the title track of his 1997 solo album). I was playing on the streets in San Francisco in 1970, somebody put a $20 bill in my pocket, and I just went out and bought that record. We were playing out on the street to get money for food because basically we were broke, but I went out and bought the Johnny & Jack record. I still have it, and that's still some of my favorite music in the world."

"So, I could do a bunch of records of just my favorite cover songs. But I've been happy with the writing thing, too, and I think some of the songs have been really good, so I want to keep that up, too."

As for the future, Miller says the couple will still be balancing the demands of touring with work at home.

"I'd like to do more producing and engineering here because I like working with people, but I just don't have a whole lot of time," he says wistfully. "I think we're going to try to get a few months just to work on our own music, we haven't had time to do that. We've got a stockpile of songs that we need to demo up and record that are good for some record somewhere."

Still, finding the time will be tough, because Buddy and Julie are also hitting the road once again.

"Emmylou has been very kind to us," he notes, "and over the past couple of years, we've probably opened a hundred shows for her. I just finished a complete tour of Australia with me and Kasey Chambers opening, and then we did another 20 dates through the States after that, and that was just over this last few months."

"So, I've opened a lot of dates, and then Julie and I have, and then, when Emmylou's not working, we have gone out and toured a fair amount. I'd like to stay at home. They say with this new record, we're starting a new tour, we're playing the Bottom Line on New Year's Eve, and that's going to kick off a tour of the Northeast, and we've got some dates to work in the meantime around the country, too. So, we're keeping busy."