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When horror fiction icon Stephen King named “Zoysia,” the most recent album by the Festus, Mo.-based band The Bottle Rockets, as one of his Top 10 albums of 2006 in an article for Entertainment Weekly magazine, no one was more surprised than band co-founder Brian Henneman himself.

“Zoysia” (named after a species of Asian grass) would end up on the best-of year-end lists of several publications, but King’s shout-out was the most visible. And it was a nice surprise, Henneman told The Daily Times this week.

“I felt like it was good enough to end up on some of those lists, but I was really surprised anybody noticed, because we’re so accustomed to being largely ignored,” he said. “I was very surprised to find out somebody like him knows who we are.”

Given the band’s pedigree — its roots date back to 1992, when Henneman, a frequent collaborator, sideman and one-time roadie with seminal alternative-country act Uncle Tupelo, decided to form his own project.

Uncle Tupelo eventually split up, with founders Jay Farrar forming Son Volt and Jeff Tweedy starting Wilco. Bands like Whiskeytown and The Jayhawks rose and fell, and alt-country splintered into so many different sub-genres that the term itself has become almost meaningless.

“I still see Jay and Jeff occasionally; Jay lives in my neighborhood about six blocks away from me,” Henneman said. “I’m always curious about what they’re doing, so I try to check their new stuff out. I like the new Wilco album (“Sky Blue Sky”) a lot. It’s not a very rocking album, but something about it, I like a lot. And Jay’s pretty steady himself. You kind of know what you’re getting with him, and what you’re getting is something good.”

Through all of the Americana/alt-country/roots-rock divergence, The Bottle Rockets have persevered. They’ve survived, thrived and held the line when it comes to making solid, roots-influenced American rock ’n’ roll. The band’s versatility at going from boozy roadhouse rockers to quietly melancholy, rough-and-beautiful acoustic ballads has been perfected over the years to a fine art, and Henneman’s weary, battle-scarred vocals convey a workingman’s aesthetic to the music that’s decidedly blue collar.

Maybe that’s the key to the longevity of The Bottle Rockets even though, for Henneman, the band’s survival has never been in question. If anything, The Bottle Rockets function like a platoon of soldiers — they do what they see as their jobs, and they keep looking ahead to the next gig, the next album, the next tour.

“We didn’t even think about making it 15 years, to tell you the truth,” he said. “Looking back now, I’m surprised it’s lasted this long. But the fact we didn’t think about it, I think, has allowed it to happen. We’ve survived a lot of stuff — the changeover of band members and stuff that kills most other bands. But every time something has changed in this band, it’s just seemed to make us better. I guess it’s lucky breaks combined with good karma.”

Henneman and drummer Mark Ortmann remain the only two remaining original members (“I guess somewhere down inside, we’re just natural born dudes to do this,” Henneman said of his long-time friendship and partnership with Ortmann. “There’s a million times we should have quit, but it’s like we’re on a mission from God.”), and shortly after forming, the band released a self-titled debut album.

Others would follow — “The Brooklyn Side” in 1994, which preceded the band being signed to Atlantic Records. The deal with Atlantic was a strange one, however, and the group’s next album, “24 Hours a Day” (which included to witty, broke-down-in-a-strange-town song “Indianapolis”) wasn’t released until 1997.

The label dropped the band in 1998, and in 1999, they had found a new home and released a new record, “Brand New Year,” on fledgling label Doolittle. It would be three years before the next album, “Songs of Sahm” (a collection of covers all written by legendary musician Doug Sahm). That same year, founding guitarist Tom Parr quit the group, and The Bottle Rockets toured as a three-piece for a while.

“I guess the first turning point for us was when Tom left the band, and not long after that, I quit drinking, which was a huge turning point,” Henneman said. “Doing that just made everything better. I just gave a s--- about everything for a change instead of being distracted by every other thing in the world. Quitting made decisions a whole lot easier to make.”

In 2003, the band released “Blue Sky,” followed by a live album in 2006 in addition to “Zoysia.” In November, Henneman said, the band is scheduled to hit the studio and begin work on the follow-up to “Zoysia.” And at this point in his life, after so many twists and turns and survival stories, Henneman said he’s a lot more apt to take notice of the little things. When it comes to songwriting, it shows.

“It’s the wonder of existence at 46 years old — the excitement of still getting excited,” he said. “Time tends to wear that out, but when it still happens, it’s like — wow, cool! You get excited but with all of this wisdom attached to it. It’s sort of strange.

“For us, we’re just continuing to do what we do — traveling, traveling and more traveling. We can’t go chasing stuff; there’s no sense in that. To some degree, if a band changes its sound radically, it can be a natural progression, a part of what that band was going to do. For us, it’s sort of a blessing because no matter what we do, it comes out sounding like we did it.

“That’s our lucky thing,” he added. “In our minds, we thought we had changed radically along the way, but when I look back on it, I hear our stuff and think, ‘Yeah, that’s recognizable. That’s what we do.’”