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Whether she's sitting alone at a piano or fronting a fiery-fingered band of bluegrass professionals, Donna Hughes wants to make you feel something.

The singer-songwriter, who performs a solo show Saturday, Dec. 12 in downtown Maryville, has done pretty well with that so far. After all, her songs have moved Alison Krauss, who selected one to cover, and respected instrumentalist Tony Rice, who called Hughes up and asked to produce one of her records.

Now, with a new album on the horizon, she's hoping that getting back to her bluegrass roots will put her back in circulation on the festival circuit and continue to expose her songs to fans new and old.

"The new record is definitely more bluegrass," she told The Daily Times this week. "The album I did in 2003, the one that Barry (Bales, bassist for Krauss's band Union Station) got ahold of and Tony got ahold of, had only two songs with piano on it, but Tony threw me for a loop when he suggested I add a lot more piano.

"I did it on the first record to be a little different, but I never really thought about being that different. And as a result, a lot of bluegrass festivals and promoters and venues ... well, I hate to say it, but a lot of them are narrow-minded, and they didn't want to have me because they thought I was going to bring a piano. So with this record, I went back to bluegrass because I wanted to get more of a standing in the circuit."

Not that she's dissatisfied with 2007's "Gaining Wisdom," released on Rounder Records -- on the contrary, working with Rice and using the piano as an instrument with which she could concentrate on playing as well solo as she does with a full band were invaluable experiences, she said. And given the meteoric path her career has taken over the past decade, those experiences amount to a great deal of entertainment for those in attendance when she takes the stage.

Raised in the small town of Trinity, N.C., Hughes was enraptured by bluegrass bands that would stop by her local church to perform. From an early age, she remembered, she was captivated by music -- singing it all over the house before performing for the first time, in church, in 1996. By that point, she had obtained a history degree in college and was selling real estate, but that first taste of the limelight set her down a new path.

She started writing obsessively, she said, seeking to ply her trade at any venue that would book her. Writing, she added, was cathartic and creative for her.

"I actually enjoyed the way that I would feel when I heard a song that emotionally moved me, and I thought it would be cool to move other people like that," she said, recalling one of her first songs -- "Time Flies When You're Having Fun," written when she was a girl. "It came from a desire to give other people that feeling, and being out in front of people and doing it more and more, it never gets old."

After "Same Old Me" was released, Bales heard a song from it on the acclaimed N.C. radio station WNCW-FM and brought Hughes to the attention of his bandleader. Krauss immediately proclaimed herself a fan, and a few days before Christmas of that year, another roots-music luminary gave her a call.

"It was just so amazing -- I can't really describe that moment to people, other than it felt like I'd gotten approval for my work," she said of her first introduction to Krauss. "I've been listening to her music for about 20 years, and I never dreamed she would actually use one of my songs. She's just so classy and very humble, and she picks music that's timeless. That's what I try to do -- write music that fits any decade."

When that phone rang, it turned out to be Rice. In the studio, Hughes was intimidated at first, she said. Rice's gentle hand guided her through the process with ease, however, and he taught Hughes to listen to her instincts.

"He's really into the artistic side of music, whereas J.D. Crowe (producer of her new album) is more into the vocals," she said. "Tony is a perfectionist, obviously, but he's more about letting the artists be themselves rather than making them try to sing it 100 times. He believes that whatever comes out first is probably the best."

The new album, titled "Hellos, Goodbyes and Butterflies," will be available after the first of the year, she added. And while it may sound like a more traditional bluegrass record, she's worked hard to keep her own eclectic style intact.

"I had people tell me after my first album that some of the songs sounded the same -- well, nobody will be telling me that on this one, that's for sure," she said. "In songwriting workshops, they try to teach everyone to write from all different angles of life -- about different subject matter, in different keys and tempos, to use different instrumentation, because the more you think outside of the box, the more likely you are to come up with better songs.

"People judge you sometimes for your record, and they want to hear what's on the record, but I can do so many more things than what my records reveal. I've played a solo set for 40 minutes at the B.B. King Blues Club in New York; I can do that for 40 minutes by myself, and then I can bring my band out and rock it for an hour or two. Some artists are confined to one or the other, but I love that I can do both, because I never really get bored."