"One Step Ahead" well may be justified as the title for Rhonda Vincent's latest dose of bluegrass.

The Missouri native just did a few days of the huge Merlefest bluegrass extravaganza in North Carolina before doing a gig in Alabama, interviews in Nashville and an appearance with Alison Krauss - the other reigning female diva of bluegrass - at the Grand Ole Opry.

And this isn't atypical for the 40-year-old, decades-long veteran of music. Despite her increasing level of success, Vincent says in a telephone interview from Nashville that recording "One Step Ahead" was "much more challenging than any other album...We were on the road (in 2002) for 300 days."

Vincent, a lively, fast-talking personality with lots on her mind, says recording started in April 2002 and continued off and on until April 2003.

"It was done in many pieces like that instead of having weeks and weeks to work on it," says Vincent. "It was running into (the studio), doing it here and there. I pretty much did the same style of recording the same way as I've done for 25 years. I always record with my brother (Darrin, whose regular night-time gig is playing with Ricky Skaggs)."

Despite the fast pace, Vincent says she has the liberty of following her own muse thanks to Rounder Records, the Cambridge, Mass.-based indie label that has now released three Vincent albums.

"I also have a record label that allows me to record with my heart," she says. "We record with my heart and my gut."

"The bottom line is we had the same formula," says Vincent.

That may not exactly be such a bad thing given the great success of Vincent in recent years with numerous awards.

But what is different, at least from outward appearances, is the cover of "One Step Ahead." Vincent is clutching a mandolin in her left hand with black leather pants and jacket and a maroon shirt with some midriff showing. Vincent exudes a "don't mess with me" look.

Vincent says, of course, this was no accident. Vincent recounts a story of meeting fans after a concert. The husband was a fan, but his wife was not so interested prior to coming after having seen a picture of Vincent in the newspaper. Vincent apparently not did not look to be particularly exciting.

The wife, however, must have liked what she heard. Vincent recalls her saying, "'Your image does not match your message. I saw your picture in the paper and thought this looks boring. My husband says we're going to the show. Your picture didn't reflect anything like your show.'"

So Vincent opted for a cover this time around with some more oomph. "Hopefully it reflects more like the music," Vincent says. "It's not your typical bluegrass cover. I don't want it to be a typical bluegrass cover. That was our goal - to make something different."

While Vincent talks about using the same formula, the fact is that the disc takes some twists and turns away from past releases.

That is probably most apparent on "Frankie Belle," an instrumental featuring Vincent taking a mandolin solo, Skaggs' mandolinist Andy Leftwich, brother Darrin on upright bass, Cody Kilby on guitar and banjo and the song's writer Molly Cherryholmes on fiddle.

First of all, Vincent has not had any instrumentals for awhile. That would date back to her pre-Rounder and Giant Records (a previous label for Vincent) days.

And second, while it may be incredibly hard to believe, Cherryholmes is all of 10 years old.

"She's a left-handed fiddle player," says Vincent. "I have not heard anyone so talented since I heard Alison Krauss when she was 12."

Vincent says she was at Silver City in Branson, Mo. Cherryholmes, who is part of a family band from Arizona, was going to be playing at Branson.

While Vincent was unable to see the family band, Vincent got her hands on the song. "I thought, 'oh my gosh. This is perfect for my album.'"

Vincent says she learned from Cherryholmes' mother that the children are homeschooled. They were given ' an assignment to write a song.

"I was floored when I found out she had written a song," says Vincent with obvious excitement. I said, 'oh man, what's that tune?' She said, "Molly wrote that.' I said, "no way.'"

"They work great for the album, and they work great for the show," Vincent says of the songs picked for the disc. "All of that has to translate."

Unlike many bluegrassers, Vincent has been unafraid to tackle some social issues. On her "Back Home Again" release from 2000, Vincent recorded "Little Angels," a song about child abuse given to her by a fan at a New Brunswick, Canada concert in 1997.

On the new disc, "Caught in the Crossfire" details a child torn by the breakup of the marriage of his parents. "I'm caught in the crossfire/of a world that's so unkind," sings Vincent. "I love'm both but I can't choose/which one to leave behind/I'm caught in the crossfire/of a world that's so unkind."

Vincent says the song is based on a true story, but it's "not something I can talk about."

"I always search for something that has a different type of content," Vincent says. "So much of bluegrass has songs about a cabin on a hill. I want a song that says something. It affects people...The song is everything. If you can have a message in it...I didn't even think that this is not typical bluegrass. I just wanted to present it because it's different."

Another aspect of the album that's different is Vincent has an increasing share in writing the songs.

On Vincent's return to bluegrass, "Back Home Again," she wrote exactly 1 of the 12 songs, and most of the 1 ("Little Angels") was written by a Canadian woman.

"I never even started to write as a teen," Vincent says. "Then I had children. I didn't write any (songs)."

Vincent eventually turned her attention to writing, many with the help of Terry Herd, a well-known bluegrass journalist.

The two met when Vincent was gathering songs for "The Storm Still Rages," her album from 2001. "I was making the commute back and forth to Nashville (from Missouri), and I was desperate to find a leadoff song. I started 'Cry of the Whippoorwill' in the car," but was unable to complete it.

She soon found herself doing a show in Texas in late 2000/early 2001.

"Terry just happened to be at a show that we were at (playing)," she says. "He was hanging out backstage, and I said, 'are you a songwriter?" I was stuck, and I talked with a couple of songwriters, and we didn't have time to finish the song. He said, 'I'm not a songwriter,' but he said, 'I'll be happy to look at it.'"

"He came back the next morning with five verses to the song. I said, 'that's too long, Terry.'" But the song ended up on the disc.

Vincent upped the ante on "One Step Ahead," by having a hand in writing 5 songs, all with Herd.

"He's a wonderful guy to write with," says Vincent. "It's hard to connect with some (writers). You're basically throwing your guts on the table when you're writing a song. He would give me a line. He got to know (if) that was stupid because I would laugh. He might be offended if someone else would do that. He would say, 'okay, that's a hokey line.' I would say, 'No. That doesn't work.'"

Getting together isn't exactly so easy to do because of Vincent's schedule. "He puts up with such a hard schedule of mine," says Vincent. "Recently, after the project was done, he flew over to Switzerland and wrote on the plane over and the way back. He realizes my schedule is so busy these days."

One could easily argue that most of Vincent's life has been one based on a busy schedule.

Music has been a part of her life since she was a tyke. But music was not exactly a new endeavor for the family. According to Vincent, music has been in the family more than five generations. Her father, Johnny, recorded his first record with his family at about the age of 11.

"Of course all the family played music," says Johnny Vincent in a phone interview from his Greentop, Mo. home. "That was our entertainment."

"She started singing when we were driving in the car," says Vincent. "She was singing happy birthday or something. She blended right in. She had the talent to start with when she was three years old. She could hardly talk. It was amazing to me."

In 1967, at the ripe old age of 5, she joined her grandfather, parents, an aunt and uncle and two cousins to appear as the Sally Mountain Show on KTVO television in Kirksville, Mo. singing "How Far Is Heaven."

"We had to make a living," Johnny Vincent says. "I just started the band up. She fit right in. She was five. Cut the mustard and fit right in. She just kept getting better and better."

"We were playing down at a country music show in Missouri. It was the Frontier Jamboree in Marceline."

"We started in with my dad, my wife, Caroline, myself and Rhonda. She would come to sing. 'Muleskinner Blues' I think. She'd get as much response as anybody on the show. I'd ask Buster (Doss, the owner) when are you going to start paying her?"

He said no pay if she didn't play an instrument.

"They said when she plays an instrument, she'll get paid," Johnny Vincent recalls. Next stop was a music store.

"She went chopping the mandolin and from then on, that was it," says the elder Vincent.

Rhonda Vincent developed her musical talents within the The Sally Family Show, which played Branson in the summer for about three months, hitting festivals on weekends and the state fair in August for about 10 days running.

"That got old," Johnny Vincent says. "I don't ever want to go to a fair no more."

For awhile, the Sally Family Show, which also released a slew of albums mainly on their own, played in Missouri and later expanded to Oklahoma.

"Normally, we'd feature her because she was the best singer," says Johnny Vincent. "She got more response actually after awhile, after she developed a bit. She could always hear harmony. She could always hear the harmony part and jump in on the harmony."

Vincent had an entree into Nashville by appearing on Jim Ed Brown's "You Can Be a Star" in the mid-80's. Her parents sang harmony off camera on what was an American Idol type of show.

"Rhonda didn't win it, but Jim Ed (asked) him to go with her on the road. She went with him for about three months. That's about the time I asked Alison Krauss to go on the road with us. She was about 14. She fit right in. Some people didn't know it wasn't Rhonda."

By 1988, Rhonda Vincent had signed with Rebel Records and put out the first of four albums on the label, "New Dreams & Sunshine."

Rebel owner Dave Freeman says he was attracted to Vincent because "I just thought she had the appeal and the charisma to attract attention...She actually came to approach us about doing something. I had been selling the Sally Mountain Show through County and Record Depot (part of the Rebel entity). We had been doing well. She was a solid presence there. I saw her a couple of festivals and liked her."

"She looked like someone who was going to make music her life," Freeman says. "It was not just a temporary thing. She was doing the kind of stuff I liked with the backing and the songs."

"She was one of the first gals that was ready to step up and be a bandleader, although when I first saw her I saw her in the context of the whole family," Freeman says.

The change did not entirely please Johnny Vincent. "At first, I was a little disappointed to be honest," he says. "Then, I understood the situation."

"My condition was deteriorating somewhat too where I couldn't get around like I used to," he says, referring to a broken neck he suffered in a 1965 car accident when Rhonda was 3. Once confined to a wheelchair, Vincent later used a cane for mobility.

"I saw her going with a younger group. That was the thing to do at the time because a family band is hard to sell. Especially when you got a little age on you too."

Rhonda Vincent stayed with Rebel through 1991 with "Timeless & True Love," but then went in a different direction.

Nashville.

Vincent put out two albums, "Written in the Stars" in 1993 and "Trouble Free" in 1996 on Giant.

The albums have a harder edge musically than her bluegrass albums, but her voice stood out quite well. What didn't stand out was the sales numbers of either album.

Vincent eventually was off the Giant roster and facing a fork in the road - get home to bluegrass or go country.

Sometimes such a change could kill a career. The old base of fans could be alienated by a change. And then after a few years away, the music biz and public has wondered whatever happened to, for example, Rhonda Vincent?

But Vincent looks at her Giant years as a valuable learning experience.

"I went to Nashville and country music," Vincent says. "I learned, wow, so much in the studio. I learned the best of Nashville, Tenn."

"I look back on it as the college years," says Vincent. "It was a learning process. Am I going to continue pursuing country or I am going to do bluegrass? Usually when you get out of school, that's the turning point."

Vincent obviously opted for bluegrass. "I put together my first bluegrass band, and the response was unbelievable."

Vincent says fans told her, "'This is what you should be doing.' I had never been happier."

Rounder, one of the leading labels for bluegrass, inked Vincent with the aptly titled "Back Home Again" her first disc. In fact, Vincent took advantage of her Giant albums by rerecording some of the songs - "Passin' of the Train" on "Back Home Again" and "An Old Memory Found Its Way Back" on "One Step Ahead."

Rounder exec Ken Irwin says in an email, "I really didn't have any questions about Rhonda's viability as an artist. "While her albums for Giant had not been overwhelming successes, we felt that she would do well in bluegrass though we didn't anticipate the incredible increase in the popularity which bluegrass would experience since our initial discussions with Rhonda. Although there were differences between the artists and their careers, we had recently had great success with "Bluegrass Rules," the first bluegrass album recorded by Ricky Skaggs following his return to the genre, and we felt that we would have similar success with Rhonda over time. We realized that there might be some resistance to her return to bluegrass, but that this would be easily overcome in Rhonda's case."

"Rhonda and I had been talking for over a year about working together on abluegrass project prior to the beginning of our formal relationship," Irwin says in his email. "We had been discussing approaching Giant about her doing a bluegrass album for us while still working with Giant on her country career, so when she became free, things were able to move pretty quickly. I had always felt that Rhonda had one of the finest voices in bluegrass and country music and from our discussions, it was clear that she was passionate about bluegrass and that she had a tremendous desire to succeed. "

With three strong albums and awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association awards, including entertainer, female vocalist and recorded event of the year in 2001, the return seemed to be the right choice.

"It's the ultimate reward," Vincent says of the awards.

"No it doesn't surprise me at all," says Johnny Vincent about his daughter's success, adding, "I always figured she was a superstar to start with. I mean that. I would just face the facts. She's been around a long time. She's done a lot of shows. She's born on the stage. She ought to know what she's doing by now."