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To some fans, especially the bluegrass purists among them, the members of King Wilkie had lost their minds.

After all, this was a band that won the title of Emerging Artist of the Year at the 2004 International Bluegrass Music Association Awards ... a group that saw its 2004 album "Broke" hit No. 1 on the Bluegrass Unlimited Top 20 Albums chart ... an outfit that put "Broke Down and Lonesome," a single from that album, in the No. 1 spot on America's Bluegrass charts.

And then they pulled the plug, taking an unexpected turn out of the genre altogether for a broader roots-oriented sound that incorporates folk, country, Old Time and any number of other styles.

"We had a couple of songs that sparked it, and then we decided to let the floodgates go," band founder Reid Burgess told The Daily Times this week. "By that point, we had put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make an artistic statement, and we didn't want to travel around making a living by putting on our Ralph Stanley hats all the time. All of us had musical backgrounds that were different, so the decision was pretty much mutual.

"For everyone, it was kind of a natural progression, although a little bit loony, because we'd had so much success with bluegrass and people were enjoying that. But we were ready to try something different. There were a lot of other bluegrass bands going on at the time, and we were just getting burnt out going from festival to festival trying to put on a real bluegrass show."

Not that Burgess and his bandmates have anything against bluegrass -- on the contrary, they still love the genre, and now that they've moved away to playing in it for a living, doing it again is more enjoyable than ever, he said.

King Wilkie first formed around 2000, when Burgess and his college buddy Ted Pitney went to a bluegrass festival one weekend. Burgess was hooked, and the two friends soon immersed themselves in all things bluegrass, even going so far as to move to a farmhouse outside of Charlottesville, Va., after graduating in 2001 and recruiting musicians from across the country.

They recorded an independent debut album, "True Songs," following it up with "Broke" in 2004.

But after debuting on the Grand Ole Opry stage in 2005, the guys found themselves reluctant to clone "Broke" for their sophomore effort. Instead, they picked up, moved to New York and cut a CD that was a definitive change of pace in 2007 -- "Low Country Suite."

"We realized we were going in a different direction, and we figured it was important to reboot," Burgess said. "Once we started bringing in new ideas, there was just no stopping it. The songs for this record ("King Wilkie Presents: The Wilkie Family Singers," released earlier this year) have been in progress for a couple of years."

The new album is most definitely a roots-oriented album, but there are sunny pop flourishes, a little classic rock reverb and a melancholy vibe to "Wilkie Family Singers" that's reminiscent of the Sub Pop band the Fruit Bats as much as it is anything bluegrass-oriented. A concept CD, "Wilkie Family Singers" tells the story of a family, Burgess said.

"It's a theme about perfect worlds that people try to create for themselves -- the perfect family, the perfect house, the perfect band that lives together and plays music together," he said. "It's about a fantasy -- what you did when you were 22 -- but now, you're nothing like that. So we made this fictional perfect world to be the backdrop for this record."

When King Wilkie stops by Barley's Taproom in Knoxville's Old City on Saturday night, "Wilkie Family Singers" will be in the spotlight. But despite its departure from the band's original sound, it won't be the only thing on the evening's musical menu.

"Our live show still consists of a stringband at its core," Burgess said. "We're obviously supporting 'Wilkie Family Singers,' but we're playing traditional tunes as well, and it seems fresher to us now -- like you can really get into it. We feel like we can take a Stanley Brothers song and make it our own, whereas before, we were trying our darndest to be a carbon copy.

"Over the years, we've learned all those tricks about making it about the music and not about what does and doesn't seem appropriate. They become part of your personal artillery for approaching music in general."