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Being classified as an Americana act has both ups and downs, according to Band of Heathens singer/multi-instrumentalist Gordy Quist.

On one hand, it's a broad enough term that it encompasses everything the group wants to accomplish with its music. On the other, however, it's been used so much that many fans dismiss the term outright, Quist told The Daily Times during a recent phone interview.

"We like the fact that it's broad, but in other ways, it doesn't mean anything to some people because of that," Quist said. "If we're asked, we say we're a rock 'n' roll band. If they want us to get specific, we say we're a roots rock 'n' roll band, but that's about as specific as we get.

"All the other genres either leave something out of what we do or don't get specific enough, and I think we'd rather err on the broader side. Everyone in this band comes from a different place and has different influences. When you throw them all together, that's rock 'n' roll."

Of course, when you're a "roots rock 'n' roll" band from Austin, Texas, escaping that all-encompassing Americana tag can be virtually impossible. And it's not like the boys are complaining; after all, the five-piece outfit has seen its profile rise steadily over the past several years.

The group came together when Quist and his two singing, songwriting bandmates -- Ed Jurdi and Colin Brooks -- often found themselves sharing a bill and the stage at the Austin club Momo's. Eventually, they began collaborating, putting aside their solo careers in favor of a new band that would grow to include bassist Seth Whitney and drummer John Chipman. Two live albums followed and in 2008, Band of Heathens released a self-titled studio debut that made waves -- ironically enough, on the Americana charts.

The record hit No. 1 on the Americana Music Association Radio chart, spent two months at No. 1 on the Euro-Americana Radio chart and came in at No. 8 on the AMA's Top 100 albums of 2008 list. The group was nominated as one of the Emerging Artists of the Year for the most recent Americana Music Association Honors and Awards, and the band's live show -- a combination of Southern soul, gentle folk and barn-burning, foot-stomping country rockers that would do Little Feat proud -- has earned the guys a rabid fanbase, as well as a taping for this year's 35th anniversary season of "Austin City Limits."

As luck might have it, Quist said, the songs for "One Foot in the Ether," the sophomore studio CD from Band of Heathens, happened quite by accident.

"When we went in, we didn't go in with any expectations," Quist said. "We were just trying to get some tracks down and weren't really planning on them being an album. We invited a friend in to play keyboards and be a part of the tracking process, and we ended up having a few songs that experimented with some new sounds.

"They were more muscular and more electric, and that was something we had been doing live a little bit. Through playing a bunch of live shows, our sound has evolved live, and we just brought that into the studio. We did take a little bit more time with this one after we recorded all of the tracks live."

The end result is a record hand-crafted, tooled, spun and sculpted to perfection. Where the group's debut album contained a healthy dose of bluegrass, "One Foot in the Ether" is a grab-bag of styles -- from rag-time piano to John Hiatt-esque beefed-up songwriter fare to soul-boogie sing-alongs designed to bring the house down. There's even a plodding, Neil Young and Crazy Horse version of Gillian Welch's "Look at Miss Ohio."

"That's a song we've been doing live for a while now," Quist said. "I was actually playing that song before the Heathens even started. I'm a big fan of hers. We actually recorded a bunch of covers that didn't make this record, but we didn't analyze too much about why we picked this one. It just seemed to fit the vibe of the rest of the record, to us. Thematically, with its lyrics, it was something that fit nicely with the rest of the songs."

Sunday, the band will open for country-rock outfit Cross Canadian Ragweed at The Valarium in Knoxville's Warehouse District.

"It's been over a year since we've been to Knoxville -- I think the last time was on this infamous tour where our van broke down on the first night of a three-week tour up the East Coast, and we had to do three weeks in a rental van and a rental car," he added.

Although they're not the headliners, the boys in Band of Heathens plan on putting on a rock 'n' roll revival of musical hellfire and melodic brimstone so that those in attendance -- whether they're fans of Americana or not, or have heard of Band of Heathens or not -- can appreciate and get behind.

It's what the group does best, and while success has afforded the members the chance to reach more people, it's hard to get out of the mindset of playing a weekly showcase for a hometown crowd, Quist said.

"We're used to playing all of the time -- to paying bills by playing music -- so the name of the game is to play as much as possible," he said. "But as we've grown, we've had management and publicists and all of the members of our team who make life a lot better for us tell us to slow down. We've had to stay out of some markets for the sake of going further.

"It's about doing bigger shows less frequently -- instead of doing 200 people every Tuesday night in Austin, it's about pulling in 500 or 700 or 800 people every couple of months. And that's kind of been interesting, because we're musicians, and we like to play live. That's been an interesting philosophical debate within our team right now, but it's a good thing. Everyone in the band wants to play music because it's a lot of fun, but there's obviously a game plan that the people we hire come up with for us."