"We see ourselves as five very, very lucky young women, to be able to do this for a living. If people knew how much fun we have, everyone would do it," says KC Groves, founder of the all-female - or, as they prefer to say, "all-g'Earl" - old time ensemble Uncle Earl.

"Just the fact that we can make a living at this is a beautiful thing, and we feel very fortunate to be able to do that. I mean, we have moments all the time where we look at each other like, 'Oh my God, we get to do this?'"

Groves and her bandmates are at a bluegrass festival deep in the woods of Maine in late July, and as if the travel and adventure of touring weren't enough for this tight-knit quintet - mandolin player Groves, guitarist Kristin Andreassen, banjo player Abigail Washburn, fiddler extraordinaire Rayna Gellert and newest member bassist Sharon Gilchrist - they also have the excitement of the release of not only their first nationally distributed album as a band, "She Waits For Night" (Rounder), but also that of Washburn's solo debut, "Song Of The Traveling Daughter" (Nettwerk America) in July and August respectively.

The genesis of the band came in the form of "She Went Upstairs," an album of old time songs released under the Uncle Earl name by Groves and co-founder Jo Serrapere, who has since moved on.

The name, by the way, has no particular relevance to Scruggs or any other particular Earl, only that, as Groves has said previously, "We just thought it would be a funny name for an all-women's group."

Though the album focused on Groves and Serrapere, it featured full instrumental backup, and as Groves says, "It went over so well that we kept getting requests to do more gigs. We did a couple out in Colorado, and it seemed that people really liked it. People liked the album, so we just kept taking gigs as they came without any real plans of being a band or taking it too seriously...so it kind of came to a point where I was really into it, and Jo wasn't quite as into it, and so she just gave me her blessings and said, 'This looks like a good thing that you could really make work. You should do it. You should find some people who are into it, and go for it."

As the daughter of well-known old time fiddler Dan Gellert, Rayna is the only one of the five raised almost entirely from birth in the music.

Washburn discovered Doc Watson's banjo work about the same time as she traveled to China while in college and became immersed in that culture (both influences infuse her solo disc, and she speaks - and sings - fluent Mandarin).

When not out with the "g'Earls", Gilchrist can often be found backing Tony Rice and Peter Rowan.

Andreassen, for her part, never imagined herself as a musician at all, let alone a working professional, and her introduction to old time music came somewhat indirectly.

"I was like a punk rocker kid when I was in high school, and then I went off to college, and I would dance, just go to clubs. Then I went to Cape Breton, Canada after college, and that was really the first time in my adult life that I heard fiddle music that was just being played for fun, you know, in the living room where people would just play."

"In Cape Breton, it just seemed like everybody in the whole universe there could do something with traditional music, and I realized I think at that point that my experience of music had become just about buying classic CDs and listening to other people play music on the radio, and that kind of disturbed me. So, I started dancing when I was up in Cape Breton."

Eventually, she says, she picked up fiddle and guitar and began frequenting festivals and jam sessions where she could find them.

Bluegrass, says Groves, was her pathway into old time music.

While studying mandolin at the Augusta Heritage Center in West Virginia, she says, "(we went to) a festival a few hours down the road. (I had) kind of a vague description about this festival, but I had the weekend off, so I went down there, and it was an old time festival, and it just really spoke to me. I loved the kind of relaxed vibe of the musicians, of the non-competitiveness of it, very tune-oriented. (It) doesn't focus on the solos, and it just really spoke to me. It seemed really authentic...it had the same elements I like about bluegrass, but it went just a step deeper into the tradition."

As Gellert came aboard in 2004, the group self-released a 7-song disc, "Raise A Ruckus," but the Rounder disc represents their first full-scale release as a band.

Andreassen exuberantly talks about the good fortune of having longtime friend (of all of them) Dirk Powell as producer.

"There just aren't that many people out there (like Powell) that are playing old time music with integrity and skill and are also versed in those kinds of studio production techniques."

"You know, you often find one or the other. You find somebody who's really technically skilled as an engineer or especially as a gearhead who loves their computer more than anything and wants to try every fancy effect they've got. You find those kind of people or people who are really great at pop arranging or bluegrass, which is very very different from the aesthetic that we're going for...just very much about groove, but not necessarily about arrangement, you know what I mean?"

"And then, you find any number of people like Dirk, who can play the music as well as Dirk and understands the music as well, but to find the two things together...yeah, it's really special."

For example, relates Groves, when it came time to record "There Is A Time," a tune originally done by The Dillards, "That was one of those things that happened right in the studio. It was born right there before we went into the room to record it. We had sort of a more predictable arrangement of it, and Dirk said, 'No, let's make this a little deeper, a little spookier,' and he got out this fretless banjo and started playing the full riff, and we were like, that's all it really needs, and Abby started doing this little, kind of an African, sort of a counterpoint melody with some tape over the bridge, so it sounds really 'plunky'. Then Kristin, of course, did the thing with the feet (she clogs), and Dirk did some magical things with the post-production to make it sound like that big drum."

Though steeped in the kind of old time music that revels in classic, driving tunes like the opening "Walking In My Sleep," the ladies are all talented singers and songwriters as well. The album title is a line from Andreassen's "Pale Moon."

"It just came about while I was driving one day. A lot of songs come about when you're traveling, I don't know why. Flying, driving, walking, there's something about the traveling motion that just lets the conscious part of your brain fall away and images come into your head."

"So, I was driving, and it was a bright blue day, and there was this great, huge moon out there, and I thought 'Wow, what a strange concept - that the moon is there all day long, but you just don't notice it because it's just as bright as it is at night, but it's drowned out by the light of the day, when at night, we notice it'."

As the song began to form in her artistic consciousness, she realized, "In a way, it seemed like a metaphor for myself, sort of like growing up and growing into old time music."

"There have been times in my life when I've been really shy, especially around the music. I wouldn't play in a jam because I was really scared to get out my guitar and my fiddle to jam, I just didn't feel like I was good enough. But when I went home, I would spend hours and hours in my kitchen playing music and playing along with records and singing to myself. It was just like at a certain point I felt enough courage to break out an instrument in front of people, and that was the turning point. So, I guess that's what 'Pale Moon' is about...something that was always there that eventually you get to show to people."

Inevitably, as both Groves and Andreassen readily acknowledge, the discussion winds around to the fact that even in the 21st century, all-female bands are still something of a novelty, and the history of American music, including all forms of country music, shows that they are not always taken seriously.

Andreassen remarks, with a touch of lingering bewilderment, that they often are greeted with comments comparing them to the Be Good Tanyas, a band that, good as they are, bears no similarity to Uncle Earl outside of the fact that both are all-women bands.

"They don't play fiddle tunes...the differences are extreme. It just points out that there aren't that many all-woman bands that you can turn to. So, it's true that we're still unusual. One of the novelties about us, though, is that...we don't feel like we're creating a gimmick because the musicians in our band are just such preeminent musicians in their field that are used to not being compared just with other women," she says.

Looking at the issue from a historical and cultural perspective, Groves adds, "(Women have) played in kitchens along the Blue Ridge, the Appalachian Mountains forever, and the music has definitely been passed down, a lot, by the women in the family - a lot of female banjo players, and a lot of the ballads are sung by women. So it's very natural for women to be playing this kind of music. As far as the novelty of it, of women trying to make a living at it, I think the barrier for sure has come down, as in most areas of modern culture."

"Women definitely have more power than they used to, but there's also a long way to go. The fact that some people would still look at us as sort of a novelty is proof that it's still not completely equal, and the fact that there aren't that many, we would like to see more."

It is, as Andreassen sums up, a matter of knowing who you are, what you're about and what you want to be.

"We don't have any issues of insecurity about being women. It's conscious that we want this band to be all-women. That's why we sort of kept looking for a woman to be the bass player." (Gilchrist replaced Dan Rose, who filled in as an honorary 'g'Earl' for much of the past two years).

"We wanted the vibe to be all-women, partly because this band is only part-time for us. We don't do it full time, and each of the five of us in our other musical careers plays with men, maybe almost exclusively with men. So, this is another kind of expression for us."