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Roby spent six years with his first band, a punk outfit called The Lubricators, mingling with the likes of Suicidal Tendencies and Minor Threat. With no breakthrough in site, and yearning for a musical experience that involved a little more than three chords and nipple clamps, Roby broke up the Lubricators and eventually formed his second band, Six String Drag. The band announced itself to the world with a rough and ragged epynonymous debut that tempered Roby's punk attitude with a twangy country sensibility. When maverick legend Steve Earle signed the band to his E-Squared label and put them with his Twangtrust production team, a minor legend was born.

Six String Drag were playing Atlanta's Bubbapalooza festival on the same bill as Raleigh, NC neighbors and alt.country upstarts Whiskeytown, who Earle had come to see. As legend has it, Earle passed on signing Whiskeytown when he heard Six String Drag. Roby says the truth is a little more simple, and a little less interesting. At first, he's reluctant to talk about it. "This is the point where I decide whether I call Steve Earle out on this BS. No, I won't do it. Sure, that's the way the story goes." Roby pauses to laugh, and then continues the story. "I mean, he came to see Whiskeytown, they were playing the next night. Something came up, he couldn't stay for the next night, and he came to see us the first night. He had been told by a couple people he had to come see us. So he came out. Whiskeytown was a little bit less touchable. They were in a bidding war with huge money - money that Steve Earle did not have. I'll leave it at that. But it sure sounds better to say it the other way."

Still, Earle liked the band and took a chance to sign them. "He saw us at a little festival at the Star Community Bar in Atlanta, a three day festival they have out there, and just really liked us," Roby says. "He said, 'Well, I'm gonna draw back and punt because I didn't expect to come sign a band, but I'd be willing to try it out.'"

Recording the second album was a completely new experience for Roby and the band. The E-Squared team was a far cry from the bands early days, recording their first album in their guitar player's studio behind his guitar shop. "The second record, High Hat, was done in Nashville on a much more professional agenda to some extent," Roby says of the experience. "It was at a studio where people who make a lot more money than us were running it. There were producers involved, and we hadn't done that too much before."

High Hat should stand as a roots rock classic. It's a master's thesis of American roots music. Roby and bass player Rob Keller sang their harmonies as deeply and sweetly as any brother act. "Guilty" is a rowdy country number that stomps like nobody's business. "Keep on Pushin'" is a tale of day to day redemption told with the same soul that has kept Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard relevant all of these years. And "Top of the Mountain" proves that the band, unlike most of their rock and roll peers, didn't need to hire a gospel choir to sing like they were truly feeling the power of the Word.

High Hat is remarkable in its breadth and execution, and set high expectations for Roby's talent as a songwriter. The album drew innumerable flattering comparisons: Elvis Costello, Credence Clearwater Revival, The Louvin Brothers, NRBQ, The Band, Doug Sahm, even the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Every time a writer heard Six String Drag, they also heard their favorite pop and country bands lurking somewhere in Six String Drag's sound. The history came naturally to Roby and Keller. They spent a lot of time developing their sound before the first note hit tape. "Rob owned a record store in South Carolina, and him and I both worked there, so we were just constantly soaking stuff up," says Roby. "We had unlimited sources - stuff coming in used all the time, looking at the back of a record or listening to something. And then you go backwards and listen to those guys, and before you know it, you're at 1918."

There are a few noticeable differences between Six String Drag and Mercury's Blues. Keller's harmony vocals and Scott Miller's guitar solos are gone, and none of the songs dish out quite the same pounding as High Hat's "Bottle of Blue" or "Gasoline Maybeline." But the songs are no less affecting or emotional. If anything, the focus is drawn more tightly around Roby's voice -- a homepsun amalgam of Leon Redbone and John Fogerty -- and his storytelling. His character portraits have matured, and each character has a voice separate from Roby's own. "I don't know if it happened naturally or somewhat contrived, getting away from, 'Look at poor old fat old me.' Okay, let's look at poor old fat old somebody else. It's a lot more believable. No one wants to hear you whine. So you write stories and you put a little bit of yourself into them."

It's a shame, then, that Roby had to go overseas, to Germany's Glitter Box records, to release Mercury's Blues. Though it has been available in Europe for more than a year, Roby had to create Ricebox Records to release the album domestically. Roby believes the wave of corporate consolidation that hit record companies last year hurt his chances for a new deal. "Everyone was scared, all the way from the bottom to the top. No smaller labels wanted to sign smaller acts, or medium sized labels, independents and stuff, or imprints wanted to sign smaller acts because probably a lot of them were waiting around to see how many big hit bands got dropped that they could pick up."

But for all of his ups and downs, Roby is singing the blues with a smile. "At least make some fun of your blues, you know what I mean? If you shut yourself up in your blues too long you just go downhill real quick."