Though speaking over the phone from Nashville, where he and his bandmates are preparing to debut their new Skaggs Family release "No Other Way" on Eddie Stubbs' widely popular classic country and bluegrass radio show on WSM, Mountain Heart's Steve Gulley is speaking, almost subconsciously as the single voice of five individual, distinguished musicians who together just happen to comprise one of the most exciting and innovative bands to appear on the bluegrass scene in the last decade.

"We took a lot more chances with this record musically, I think, than the first two. I'm proud of everything we've recorded, but this is the most complete record we've recorded, for sure, from five personalities," he says. "I think we got them all in there. All of our backgrounds come through, and I think we got a little more than we bargained for in some cases. This record is more fulfilling, for me, than any we've cut."

The core of the band (guitarist Gulley, banjo player Barry Abernathy and fiddler Jim Van Cleve) formed in 1998, following the time all three spent touring as part of Quicksilver, the longtime band led by legendary bluegrass showman Doyle Lawson.

In the four short years since, they are considered one of the bands playing the top festivals. Gulley is quick to say that it's just a case of kindred spirits finding common musical ground, not reliance on the brilliance of a single, focal individual.

"I don't think you can go into this forming of a band, or beginning of, really, a musical idea, such as a new band, and say 'we're gonna do this,' and 'we're gonna do that.' I think you can say 'let's try this,' and 'let's try that.' That bodes well when you're trying to have a distinctive niche or a distinctive sound in music."

"It's always worked that way for the really great bands that I've always been interested in, from Flatt & Scruggs to people like the Johnson Mountain Boys and J.D. Crowe and the New South,...a big band for me in the '70s as a teenager. All those bands had one common denominator, and that was a spark or just something that just jumped off the grooves of that record into your ears, and I think anybody that listens to music would say that about certain groups that touched them."

Warming to his theme, Gulley's smile comes all the way through the phone line as he acknowledges that, more than anything, they're having as good a time off-stage as they are on-stage.

"I think our big thing is chemistry. I really think that's the biggest thing we have going for us. We've had a couple of band member changes, and although they were amicable, you always have to replace good people with good people again, and we've been able to do that. Our chemistry off-stage is great...we're like a bunch of 14-year old kids on the road. We have a lot of fun, we enjoy being with one other as people, and we really love to play and sing with each other, this group of five people. I think that is what makes our sound different. As far as musically, I think our sound is different because we've taken five personalities...and tried to incorporate them into a more or less distinctive sound."

The band changes Gulley mentions resulted in the addition of mandolin player Adam Steffey, a longtime presence in Alison Krauss' band, Union Station, and Jason Moore, a veteran bassist who came over from the highly regarded James King Band.

Gulley is pleased that, through it all, the hallmark of the "Mountain Heart Sound" has been that folks can't decide which is better, their vocals or their instrumentals.

"We're not just a vocal band, and we're not just an instrumental band. There's a lot of great bands and a lot of great players in this business...but I think as a band, we're all role-oriented, we're band players, there's no really big stars in our bunch, and I don't think there ever will be. Our attitudes and our chemistry bode well for us to have a distinctive sound."

As distinctive as that sound is, Gulley quickly agrees that the time spent with Lawson was good schooling, and the excitement they carry on stage with them owes more than a little to the lessons they learned from him.

"Doyle's biggest talent is being able to put a band together and make it fit. You can't be around Doyle Lawson without learning something. He's the consummate entertainer, and he knows how to handle himself on and off stage. That's a big thing with us too, not only in the way we perform, but also in the way we do business, and so I learned all those things from Doyle to a certain degree...of course our show is really high energy. That wasn't by planning as much as by simple human nature. Our chemistry is good enough, but, of course, we learned a lot of valuable lessons from Doyle, and the entertainment aspect is always in the forefront for him because he always conducted himself as a steady and consummate entertainer."

After releasing their debut, self-titled disc, their follow-up "The Journey" (both on Virginia-based Doobie Shea Records) was an all-gospel release. "No Other Way" mixes the spiritual with the hard-chargin', straight-ahead 'grass, but Gulley again speaks for all five in saying that their spiritual side is an integral part of who they are.

"I was raised up in the Missionary Baptist Church my granddad built in the '40s in the mountains of east Tennessee where I'm from," he says. "I'm from Cumberland Gap. That goes back to my faith. I've been a Christian all of my life, basically, and raised up in church. Gospel music and spiritual music kind of run into one another, in the way that I approach it, and the way Barry (Abernathy) approaches it because we were raised up in similar backgrounds."

"By that, I mean that if it hits me in the heart, and it hits me the way it's supposed to, of course, that's a spiritual connection, and to me, gospel music, it ministers to people as well in the lyrics. But to me, the words and the feeling have to both be there, if that makes sense. The combination of the two makes good gospel music to me, because I have to feel something, both musically and spiritually, and I think we do, as a band."

Though grateful for the opportunities to work with Tim Austin and his Doobie Shea family, when Ricky Skaggs approached the band about recording on his Skaggs Family label, Gulley says it was "the best possible situation for us...for us, he was absolutely the best in the studio as a producer. I've known Ricky for about 20 years, casually, and he talked to me a couple of times about maybe coming and working for him in different configurations, when he played country and then again in bluegrass. He's been a big, big hero of mine for many years, musically, but I wasn't awestruck by Ricky because he's a friend, and when we were in the studio it was not a situation of 'you're gonna do this, because I've sold millions of records and I know more than you do', that kind of finger-pointing. It was, 'I like it, what do you all think?'...'How do you want to do this?' He was real accommodating in the studio, and he was there through every minute of the recording, and he devoted his time and his energy, and his mind, and his great set of ears to the record. He's done everything he said he would and more when Barry and I signed the contract for the band with the label."

"No Other Way" features strong connections to another of the "A" bands to surface in recent years, Blue Highway. The two opening cuts, Shawn Lane's "Mountain Man" and Tim Stafford's "Ramblin' Heart" reflect the enormous respect they have for a band they regard as peers, colleagues and most importantly, friends. Topping it off, Blue Highway dobro wizard Rob Ickes sits in on three tracks. Gulley is enthusiastic and emphatic in praise of their collective talents.

"We love their writing. When they send us a song, it always ends up being 'us', rather than 'Blue Highway', because that's the way we arrange, according to our personnel. Their songwriting, to me, is second to none...they can write in an older vein, they can look past their youth and write really old-sounding songs, and we look for things like that. But we're always looking for a good lyric, and something we can work with as a band, and they've been great to us."

Not surprisingly, Gulley is thrilled with the wave of interest in bluegrass and traditional country music in the wake of "O Brother," and looks forward to a new era for the music.

"I think one thing great that's happened for bluegrass is that they haven't had to sell out to get the publicity because people are looking for pure music, in my idea and in my mind because country radio is just absolutely not country anymore to me. This is from a guy who grew up playing just as much Haggard and Jones as Monroe and Stanley. So, my big deal is to keep capitalizing on the fact that it is pure music and that we can carry on from this point on as we've done and not really have to change for anybody, but look maybe on a wider scope and say we do have a bigger slice of the pie now, and we've got a little more leverage with radio and television and media and some of the markets that we've never been in."

While such sentiments might brand Steve Gulley, like his Mountain Heart bandmates, as being by nature the optimistic sort prone to donning rose-colored eyewear, he cites plenty of evidence to back up what he says.

"Friends of mine who own music stores and give lessons and that kind of thing say you wouldn't believe the numbers of doctors, lawyers and professional people...who are coming in buying mandolins, banjos, fiddles and Martins and trying to learn to play. I think that's great for the music, and I think that that will carry on because I don't think it's a flash in the pan. I really don't because I've just seen the overwhelming success at the venues we've played. I think the future's bright, and everybody just needs to approach it as being the purest of pure music and always be mindful of that and try to take it to the masses."