Several bluegrass greats answered the call when Charlie Daniels put out word he wanted to make a bluegrass album. The album, which came out this year, has a deep line up that includes Earl Scruggs, Ricky Skaggs and Mac Wiseman.

Daniels named it Songs from the Longleaf Pines, a reference and reverence to his home state of North Carolina, where the longleaf pine is the official state tree.

“I cut my teeth on bluegrass,” said Daniels, who grew up in rural eastern North Carolina in the 1930s and 1940s. “In my formative years, in my teens, I was playing bluegrass music.”

That’s right Western North Carolina, they were playing bluegrass down east back then, even though when it comes to bluegrass “you tend to think more about mountaineers than you do jetty jumpers,” Daniels said.

Daniels had a band that pre-dated the Charlie Daniels band called The Rockets — popular in beer joints around Camp Lejeune — and soon found his own sound, however.

“At the time Elvis came along I started getting interested in that kind of music and kind of switched over. But I never got away from bluegrass. So when we did this album, it was kind of like revisiting an old friend. I got right back into it again.”

Daniels doesn’t mask his tendency for rocking and rolling in his bluegrass renditions though.

On the album, Walking in Jerusalem, usually sung as a melodic but slightly subdued vocals-based hymn, is transformed into a jubilant jam. The traditional song “I’m Working on a Building (For My Lord)” sounds like gospel-rock with overtones of rough country twang. And “I’ll Fly Away,” a solemn gospel tune popularized by “O Brother Where Art Thou,” becomes a boot stomping jig under Daniels’ bow and pick.

That’s only half the story though. Songs from the Longleaf Pines has plenty of soulful ballads and slow, sweet gospel. “Keep on the Sunny Side” is played true to Carter Family fashion.

It’s not Daniels’ first foray into more traditional sounds. It’s actually his fourth gospel album, including How Sweet The Sound, a two-disc gospel collection released in 2002. In that album, Daniels put an original twist on “Amazing Grace” using his trademark southern-rock, bluesy sound. Daniels was nominated in 2003 for a Grammy for best Southern, Country, or Bluegrass Gospel album.

“Being a believer and being a Christian, I had been wanting to do a gospel album for a long time,” Daniels said. “But major record albums don’t do gospel very much any more. One approached me several years ago and asked if we would like to do gospel record.”

Daniels said he will play “Preachin’ Prayin’ and Singin’” off his new album at the WCU concert on Aug. 19.