Landmarks fill Porter Wagoner's career. Three Grammy awards. Member of the Grand Ole Opry for 45 years. Nearly four decades of timeless music. Dolly Parton.

But Wagoner has just received more good fortune.

Wagoner's new album "Unplugged" tackles new terrain for a man who's tackled plenty of terrain. You might think that after nearly 50 years as a force in country music that Wagoner's well has grown a bit dry.

Think again.

Released on Nashville's Shell Point Records, "Unplugged" follows his release from 2000, "The Best I've Ever Been," with aplomb aplenty.

So, with the widespread success of the "O, Brother Where Art Thou?" soundtrack and general resurgence in acoustic music, Wagoner decided to try his hand at it, too.

"I wanted to do something a little bit different," Wagoner says by phone from his Nashville office. This from the man who once recorded a song about insanity, "The Rubber Room." It's not bluegrass, though. You won't hear a banjo. No mandolin, but you will hear Wagoner's emotive voice front and center. Backed by guitars, drums and some of the finest songs you'll hear anywhere, Wagoner wins from the get-go.

"I didn't want to do a bluegrass album because there's been so many of those going around since 'O, Brother Where Art Thou,'" he says. "But I wanted to do one with acoustic instruments, and that's the reason I chose to do that. I wanted to do something that was a little bit unique for myself. I really think I sing better on that probably than anything that I've ever done."

Perhaps in part as a result to its instrumentation, Wagoner's voice - exposing the raw emotion of the songs - comes right out at you. It's not mixed in the middle or hidden in the back. Drums and guitars do not pummel his voice into submission and thereby ruin song interpretations.

"I think my voice just sounds a little better," Wagoner says. "It don't sound maybe as strong as it used to on some things, but I think it has a better quality to it."

"I tried real hard on this and wanted it to sound real good. When you get in the later years of your life, things mean a little more to you." If so, then Wagoner has much to look forward to.

Long, long overdue, but come October he will officially become a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

"I'm really proud of that. I didn't know if it'd ever happen or not, but it did," Wagoner says. "I thought about it for a while, but then, well, you know how that goes."

Most inductees receive a call that informs them that they have been selected for induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Wagoner learned of his selection on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. As a national audience looked on during a live broadcast portion of the show in August, the Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines summoned Wagoner forth.

Wagoner thought nothing of it. But then she notified him that he had been chosen to become the newest member of the Hall of Fame. Folks gathered around in applause as the crowd stood and cheered the unofficial "ambassador" of the Opry. Wagoner was surprised - for good reason.

"I didn't know what they were talkin' about," Wagoner says. "I couldn't hear 'em. I didn't know until it was over that that was what the announcement was. Pete Fisher, the manager of the Opry, asked me if I'd come early that night to be on the show with them. Said they'd asked for me to be on. So, I didn't know what it was. I thought maybe it was just their first time at the Opry (which it was), or they was hittin' on me, one of the two!"

Wishful thinking, Porter, but not quite.

"I was naturally thrilled, but had I known that that's what it was I'd have made a little better appreciation speech for it. Cause I just told 'em that that was great, you know, cause I really didn't know what they were talkin' about."

Wagoner looked shocked.

"I was. I was even more shocked when I found out that that's what it was. I sure was."

Chalk it up as an Opry moment, a unique one. To date no other Opry member or otherwise has received word of impending Hall of Fame induction while on stage at the Opry.

"I don't believe it's ever happened before," Wagoner says. "I had no earthly idea. It certainly was a shock. If they wanted to shock me, that certainly was it."

The new disc also has a Hall of Fame connection.

Produced by Wagoner, it includes the picking prowess of Fred Newell on steel guitar and Leon Rhodes (a former member of Ernest Tubb's Texas Troubadours). Oh, and another member of the Country Music Hall of Fame helps Wagoner sing two of the album's 10 tracks.

"I was unbelievably proud that Willie Nelson came in and did that with me," Wagoner says. "I called Willie to be a guest on the Opry. I told, 'man, you haven't been on the Opry in a long time. Why don't you come on up and do it?' And he said, 'when do you want me to do it?'"

So given a date in April, Nelson came up from Texas and appeared on the Opry. Deal done. Not quite.

"Well, I got to thinkin' that while he was in town I would be doing this CD. I called him back and said, 'man, I'm not tryin' to thump a free melon, but I would love for you to sing a couple of songs with me on my new album.'"

Nelson asked him what he wanted to sing, then told Wagoner to pick out two songs, and he'd be glad to record them.

"It was really that simple," Wagoner says. "I thought 'Family Bible.' He wrote that years and years ago. I thought that was one of the best gospel songs I'd ever heard. So, I asked him about that, and he said sure. I figured that 'Silver Eagle Meets the Great Speckled Bird' would be a good song, and he liked it really well."

"Kind of a funny thing happened. He called me back and said, 'what key do you do 'Family Bible' in?' I said, 'well, I used to do it in C. He said, 'so did I, but I do it a little bit lower now, how about you? What about B flat?' I said, man, that's exactly where it works for me. There's proof that things do get a little bit lower as you get older, and he and I had a big laugh over that."

Laughing aside, Wagoner employed excellent taste in song choice. He chose an old familiar one in Dolly Parton's "Lost Forever In Your Kiss."

"We did that as a duet one time," he says. "It was one of my favorite duets that me and Dolly did. I thought it was a great, great song."

Likewise Wayne Rainey's "(Why Don't You) Haul Off And Love Me." Over much of the past year, Wagoner's been singing it live on the Opry, so why not record it? "I remember when that song was out," Wagoner says. "I just changed it around a little bit, did it a little more like today's music."

Do not take that to mean that Wagoner's gone whacko, gone pop like McGraw or Hill. Worry not, purists. To paraphrase Wagoner's late friend Waylon Jennings, Wagoner could not go pop with a mouthful of firecrackers.

Wagoner also chose another golden oldie in "Girl in the Blue Velvet Band." Credited to the pens of Cliff Carlisle and Mel Foree, no one knows for certain who wrote the song.

"When I was a kid, I learned that song from Bill Monroe," Wagoner says. "I couldn't find out who wrote the song. I really don't know."

As for his own writing, the man who wrote "Trademark," a Top 10 hit for Carl Smith, Wagoner says that he writes when opportunity arises.

"I've written some new things with a guy that's a good friend of mine, Randy Van Warmer, a brilliant writer," Wagoner says. "He and I get together every month or so and write some things. One of them will be out in a little while, I think, called 'Tough Talking Cowboy.' Great song. We're gonna pitch it to the Dixie Chicks. Would that not be a trip if they recorded a Porter Wagoner song?"

It should come as no surprise that the man who once recorded such biting social commentaries as "The Cold Hard Facts of Life" and "Skid Row Joe," would include a song such as his own "Silence in the Wind" on his new album.

written, the song begs a number of different interpretations. Given the stage of life that the 75-year-old Wagoner is now in, such lines as "we have almost reached the end, I can hear the final warning," appears as if he's measuring his final days. Then again, maybe not.

"'Silence in the Wind' is probably the best song I've written during my lifetime," Wagoner says. "I've wrote some 400 songs during my whole career, but I really think that's a good song with a great melody. It was a song that was just kind of given to me. I wrote it in my boat one time on the lake. I hope the fans like it because I think it says something a little bit different."

Therein lies one reason why Wagoner has endured so well for so long. If anything his career-wide choice of material represents risks and a willingness to go forth and explore a litany of topics. He's addressed such subjects as alcoholism ("Skid Row Joe"), life sense from an eccentric ("Waldo the Weirdo"), insanity ("The Rubber Room") and homelessness ("The Silent Kind").

Another explanation for Wagoner's perseverance comes more simply. As Willie Nelson says, "Retire from what?"

"That is so true. The music business is so easy it's not like work, man," Wagoner says. "I'm sure that if your job is something that you love, then you will excel at. I really believe that. Man, I would have been in the music business even if I had not made a livin' at it."