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When Blueground Undergrass launched in 1998, roots music fans weren't quite sure what to make of the wild-eyed Rev. Jeff Mosier and his rowdy band of rapscallions.

Were they bluegrass? A jam band? Alternative-country? Those questions and more led to many shows where the band had to fight harder to win over those who stood before them, puzzled.

"The young guys in the band now are really bringing a lot to the table to tighten up what we've done in the past, to where it's a little more accessible to their generation than it was back in 2000," Mosier told The Daily Times this week. "Back then, people just came and stared at us. They liked it and thought it was charming, but at the end of the day, we wouldn't get the Americana fans, the Wilco, Son Volt, punk-sensible hippies, but we're getting them now. And we're doing it without having to try."

Much of that has to do with the changing nature of the band itself. Mosier, one of two remaining original members, cut his musical teeth at the feet of the quirky, legendary Col. Bruce Hampton as a member of Hampton's Aquarium Rescue Unit. A forerunner of such jam bands as Widespread Panic and Phish, ARU was a staple of Southern rock goodness, jam band improvisation and the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach of bluegrass.

Since forming Blueground Undergrass, Mosier has moved more toward the melodic center, while at the same time he's fought to keep the band from drifting too far into today's preconceived notion of what a jam band is and how it plays music.

"Our sound really is us beating and banging and figuring out how to play a song 40 different ways on 40 different gigs as opposed to playing 40 different versions of the song on the record," Mosier said. "That's the difference between us and a band that's in the jam band world. I call that stunt-rock, because they do plan what they do. I'm from the old school, man — the Aquarium Rescue Unit, where if you plan it, it's not jamming. Everything you decide before you get to the stage is one less choice you'll be able to make by ear."

Mosier got his start playing with his brother in the band Good Medicine, of which he was a member for almost 23 years. Also with his brother, he hosted the bluegrass radio show "Born in a Barn" on WRFG-FM 89.3 in Atlanta before joining forces with Hampton in the late 1980s. With Blueground Undergrass, Mosier pioneered a term he coined called "hick-hop" — infusing bluegrass with elements of a number of different genres and styles, similar to what Bela Fleck and the Flecktones do with jazz.

"Hick-hop denoted the rural and the urban mix — we basically ruralize urban ideas and urbanize rural ideas," Mosier said. "We might take a rural idea like Old Time or bluegrass and put a hip-hop beat to it. We're genre-benders, meaning we take genres and try to put the right music in the wrong spot, or vice-versa. That's still part of our sound."

After a handful of studio and several live albums, Blueground Undergrass released "Faces" last year on Landslide Records. The title track is probably the closest he's ever come to writing a pop-oriented song, Mosier acknowledged, but it's not typical of his style.

"I know how I write, and I'm not going to change," he said. "I just write weird songs. But by allowing the other guys to step up and write some songs, it's allowed me to step away and sing harmonies and concentrate on my banjo playing. I think I'm doing more serious banjo-playing now than I did back then."

"Faces," as well as the band's approach to playing the songs from it live, is more than just an album, he added. It's a way of spreading positive energy and answering a higher calling than just drinking beer and living like a group of fraternity brothers crowded into a van driving from coast to coast. After all, all but one member has children and is married, and being constantly pulled away from home wears thin sometimes, he said.

"Touring and getting away from home doesn't do it for me," he said. "I'm still charmed by what could happen, and now I feel really, really committed to the music part of it. I feel like music is taken in a lot more by people than it was back then. People are just beaten up by what's going on out there, and they're looking for an escape. If you look at the news these days, I call it tragi-tainment, because that's what it is — tragedy packaged as entertainment.

"I think we're an antithesis to that as live musicians. We have a role that we need to continue to play now that we didn't have then — to bring some civilized sound and language to the table. I have to say, I don't think I have the energy I had back then and I lose faith in it sometimes, but when I make it to the next gig and look out at people's faces, it gets me every time. What would we do without music. That question comes to me every night.

"I can hear the music controlling us, kicking our asses rather than us being up there and controlling the music," he added. "That's what really keeps us going, and if it didn't happen, the barrel of the gun would be in the roof of my mouth a long time ago."