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A lot of people know Blue Mountain, but few know of singer-songwriter Cary Hudson's association with the group he helped found and lead for 10 years.

Take, for instance, a show he played a couple of days before New Year's Eve. As he tore into one of the bittersweet, roots-rock gems that Blue Mountain did so well, he heard one of the members of the audience exclaim, "Hey! He's playing a Blue Mountain song!"

"I wanted to tell him, 'Yeah ... I know a lot of those,'" Hudson said dryly. "I'm still kind of trying to make people aware that I was the guy in Blue Mountain, and that now I'm more than just that guy in Blue Mountain."

It's a hard row to how, but with every solo album he makes — including his most recent, "Bittersweet Blues," released last year — he gets a little more comfortable in his new skin as a solo artist. He'll always carry the shadow of Blue Mountain with him, and he wouldn't want to lose it; after all, the band helped define the ubiquitous "alt-country" genre, and through such albums as "Homegrown," "Dog Days" and "Tales of a Traveler," Blue Mountain added a lush swipe of earth tones to the roots-rock canvas painted by fellow alt-country bands Whiskeytown, Son Volt and The Jayhawks.

The band started out as The Hilltops and included both Stiratt siblings, recording and getting noticed for the 1991 album "Big Black River" before John left to work with Uncle Tupelo. Laurie Stiratt and Hudson stayed together as Blue Mountain, named after a rural community just a few miles outside of Oxford.

Blue Mountain's debut album caught the attention of several major labels, and the combination of straightforward guitar rock combined with hill country blues helped to fine-tune the definition of alternative-country. When the band broke up in 2001, not long after Whiskeytown called it quits, many fans mourned the end of an era.

Hudson's first solo album, "The Phoenix," was released in 2002, followed in 2004 by "Cool Breeze." "Bittersweet Blues" is an even more stripped-down affair.

"It's a very different record that was mostly made without a band, and that's the very first time I've approached making a record without one," he said. "I think that's sort of a natural progression for a lot of songwriters. Even if you're in a band with guys you grew up playing with, if they're not writing the songs, they don't have as much of a personal stake in the music.

"So it's that, and it's also the challenge of being able to see if you can pull it off, just a guy and a guitar, like Robert Johnson or Jimmie Rodgers. To me, it felt like a challenge to try and make a record without the loud rock 'n' roll. Having said that, I'm not done playing in bands or playing rock 'n' roll."

The album was also written, in part, as a reaction to Hurricane Katrina's devastation of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Hudson said. Having grown up an hour from the beach, the area he's called home his whole life has changed radically because of the storm.

"I was living in Hattiesburg at the time, and while it didn't get hit as hard as the coast, wee still got pounded really good," he said. "And of course, it just decimated the whole coast. The parts that we used to go to when I was growing up, Gulfport and Biloxi, they're just gone. They're completely nonexistent. And now it seems like people from Hattiesburg south are all going through post-traumatic stress disorder."

While the tragedy fueled Hudson's creative fires, it wasn't exactly something he planned or desired. Still, it became grist for his songwriting mill, adding dark overtones to "Bittersweet Blues" that hit like a novel by fellow Mississippian Larry Brown — stark, hardscrabble and haunted in a way that's unique to the Magnolia State.

"I guess what's a personal hardship is a blessing if you're an artist, in a weird, weird way, because if you've got problems, it's pretty easy to write songs about that," he said. "If you listen to Hank Williams Sr. or Willie Nelson, all their songs are about their problems and heartache, so it's great because it gives you something to write about in that respect.

"It's been said that some artists go around looking for trouble just to have something to write about, but I'm lucky in that respect. I didn't have any problems finding trouble last year; it just sort of found me."