Veteran bluegrass singer, mandolin picker and producer Don Rigsby, 38, is Mississippi-bound on a late night errand as he talks via cell phone about his multi-faceted music career. Almost as an omen, it's just past midnight when the conversation wraps up, since he's savoring the mid-July release of his debut recording as leader of his own band, Midnight Call, which was the title of his 2003 solo release on Sugar Hill.

He credits his wife, Tina, for choosing the name (and acknowledges with a wry chuckle that it works better than the title of his earlier solo effort "Empty Old Mailbox"), but laughs as he relates that the name has had unintended side effects.

"It's kind of funny. One of the guys in my band, an earlier version of the band, took one of the paychecks to the bank, and they thought he was working for an escort service - 'What kind of outfit are you working for?'"

Rigsby is a native of Isonville, in the same part of eastern Kentucky that produced Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs, who happens to be Rigsby's cousin. The new album, "Hillbilly Heartache" (on Rebel) is a testament to the people and culture that Rigsby grew up around, and while the word "hillbilly" still opens old wounds among many of Appalachian heritage, Rigsby is among those who openly embrace it.

"I am what I am, you know, and I have a college education, but that's beside the point. You can be an educated hillbilly. I'm just so proud to be (from) where I'm from, I just try to extol the virtues of my heritage. People that were born and raised where I'm from are hard-working people, and they've got plenty to be proud of and don't need to be ashamed."

The opening three cuts of the album, in fact, speak volumes about the undercurrents of mountain life that all the "hillbilly" clichŽs and stereotypes never touch on. The album's title track echoes the panic of hearing the siren that signals a mine disaster; "Daddy Was A Moonshine Man" is more about economic necessity than the morality of temperance or prohibition; and "These Golden Fields" serves as reminder that growing your own food is among the hardest but most satisfying work there is.

"Those three songs...tell us about people who are proud and hard-working. It doesn't tell that they did anything that was bad, if you take note of the lyrics. They tell about people that had a hard lifestyle, and if you can make it growing up in that kind of a region and somehow kind of scratch out a living, well that to me is a pretty impressive thing."

Unsurprisingly, decades of condescension and derision from city folk and other flatlanders prompts Rigsby to a typically blunt and forthright assessment.

"Folks that have a tendency to look down on folks from Appalachia, you know, I just kind of have to say shame on them because they just don't know a whole lot about it. I don't put a lot of value in what they have to say anyway, I mean, I've seen so much of that garbage on television, etc...You know, those songs aren't bad things, they're just facts of life. All three of those songs are just facts of life, and I don't see anything bad about them, do you?"

From his earliest days as a sideman for the likes of J. D. Crowe and others, the liner notes of bluegrass-oriented labels are peppered with Rigsby's name.

Probably best known for his stint in the late '90s and into 2001 with the Lonesome River Band, he's also been a driving force in the "supergroup" projects released under the Longview name (three so far, but he lets drop that a fourth is "in the can" and projected for possible spring '07 release on Rounder).

Add in the two duet albums with longtime friend Dudley Connell, his partnership with Glen Duncan in Rock County, the aforementioned solo studio projects and literally dozens of projects he's produced, guested on, or both and the inescapable conclusion is that Don Rigsby may be the busiest man in bluegrass.

His evolution to band leader began to take shape with a pair of life-altering events that took place in May 2001 as his time with the Lonesome River Band was winding down. The first was the birth of his daughter, Sarah. As a new father, he was feeling more and more keenly that, as successful and popular as LRB was, the success didn't translate into security for himself and his young family.

"I'd just been blessed with good health, never really needed anything like (retirement benefits and insurance), but my wife had just given birth to a child. I was looking at my future and saying, 'You know, as much fun as this has been and as magnanimous as I consider it, I don't have retirement. I don't have health care. I don't have a guaranteed paycheck, really. The band (LRB) was really good, but we were kind of at our zenith. and I couldn't really see - nothing at all against anybody in that band (Sammy Shelor, Ronnie Bowman and Kenny Smith), they're all stellar musicians and performers and wonderful people, I consider them all friends - but we were kind of at the pinnacle of what I considered we could do, and I had to try and look out for my family."

Within a few days of his daughter's birth, the other shoe fell when Rigsby got a phone call from longtime friend Sandy Knipp, a DJ at Morehead State University's station WMKY. Knipp had also been serving as the director of the university's Kentucky Center for Traditional Music, a part-time position that was on the verge of expansion to a full-time job with benefits.

"When Sandy called me and asked me if I knew anybody who would be interested in that job, I kind of looked at it as maybe this is a sign from the Good Lord, maybe he's trying to tell me something, and I said, 'Well, do you think that I'd be qualified for something like that?,' and he said, 'Are you serious? Would you even consider it?' I said, 'Well, yeah, I'll consider it'."

"So, we began to get the wheels in motion, and it was the unanimous decision that I would be the best man to lead the charge, and I've been there for 5 years now this coming Dec. 1. At the same time, I had been talking to Glen Duncan about starting Rock County, and that's when that all came together at about the same time."

The partnership with Duncan lasted through two Rebel releases that were critically well received, but the band eventually dissolved due in large part to Duncan's desire to spend more time at home with his family as they dealt with the illness of a child.

Rigsby notes that it's the nature of the business that bands come and go and intimates that there were some bruised feelings, but sometimes lemons do turn into lemonade.

"At the time, it seemed like a bad deal to me, but really...by not letting me continue with that name they were doing me a favor because it forced me to take stock of things, get all my ducks in a row and do what I needed to do, and that's put my own band together and go on."

"I did it after getting the advice of a couple of people I pay heed to and really have a lot of respect for, and that's Larry Sparks and Sonny Osborne, and they both told me that I needed to put my own band together and put my own name out front and go on because they said people knew who I was, and it would take a little while for them to get used to the idea of it. But once they got used to it, it would be fine. We're starting to get a little traction now, but it does take some time."

The new album features a sterling rendition of Bill Monroe's "Kentucky Waltz," and while conceding that he may be biased toward his fellow Kentuckian, Rigsby senses a certain revisionism that clearly nags at him.

"Anybody that plays the mandolin and sings tenor and would try to tell you that Bill Monroe didn't influence them, I don't think they truly understand the nature of bluegrass music because Bill is the inventor of this music, you know, he's the innovator...there seems to be some talk that bluegrass music was invented at Nashville, at the Ryman Auditorium, and I just have to take issue with that. I don't think so."

"It was invented by Bill Monroe, and he was born in Kentucky. Bluegrass music was born in Kentucky. It may have been perfected and honed and sharpened (by Monroe) in Tennessee at the Ryman, on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry, and I wouldn't dispute that, but I really have a problem with those folks wanting to claim that they have the place where it was invented and born, and that's all I've got to say about it."

"There's a big old sign on the stage at the Ryman, and last year at the IBMA awards they presented it and unveiled it, and I was just aghast that they would allow that. I guess anybody could put up a sign that says something was invented there, and what can Kentucky do, sue them for it? It's probably not worth the effort, but I mean, the history would bear it out differently if Bill were here...I think he'd tell them different."

Noting the three-year interlude between "The Midnight Call" and "Hillbilly Heartache" - though he never intended it to be that long - Rigsby is already planning a follow-up album to keep the momentum rolling forward. He's also effusive about the new, retooled Longview lineup on that new project.

Though he's sad to see Joe Mullins, Connell and Duncan dropping out, he's pleased with the new and different energy brought by the newcomers - J. D. Crowe, Ron Stewart and Lou Reid. "They'll do," he laughs.

As he winds toward Mississippi through the Tennessee midnight hour, Don Rigsby sounds like a man ready to emerge as his own musical boss on his own terms, but true to his hillbilly heritage, well-grounded in reality.

"I've been in this, you know, right at 20 years, maybe a little better, and I've learned that you can't make everybody happy all the time. There's some people you can never make happy with anything you do, so you just gotta quit worrying about it and try to make the music to make yourself happy, and those that are gonna like what you do are gonna like it, and those that aren't, they're not gonna like it anyway. So just keep trudging along and do the best you can."