Have you ever wondered about the offstage world of a professional musician? Every month in this column, bluegrass now will provide a glimpse into the lives of some of your favorite bluegrass stars. To see captions, just move your cursor over the photos!

Larry Cordle is under the weather.

In a voice that's strong and resonant in spite of his fatigue, he talks about his weekend with his band, Lonesome Standard Time. “The reason I've got this darned cold is that I lost so much sleep. We landed in Connecticut, worked two shows, went to Boston the next day and worked two shows, went to the hotel, got up at 3AM, flew home, drove straight to the bus, and went to Chattanooga to play two shows.” When his bus pulled into the driveway on Sunday night, Larry had managed four hours of sleep in three days.

“I don't think many people understand exactly what we have to go through,” he says wryly. “It looks easy, and it is easy, compared to being out on a roof in 100 degrees, six days a week, like friends of mine still do. But I've worked harder the last four years than I've ever worked in my life.”

That's saying a lot, when one considers that Cordle's roots are in the rocky soil of a small family farm in eastern Kentucky. “We raised just about everything we ate, had our own cattle and hogs and chickens. We raised tobacco as a cash crop. It was a good way to grow up. I wouldn't trade it for anything.”

With encouragement from his great-grandfather, an old-time fiddler, Larry began to play when he was about 12. “Friday and Saturday nights, there were always pickin' things,” he remembers. “Ricky Skaggs' family lived a mile from me. Good musicians always came to his house!”

After a stint in the Navy, Larry obtained a degree in accounting. He continued to play music on the side, which ultimately paid off. In 1980, he was working as a cost accountant when a band in Lexington invited him to join. He never looked back.

Larry may be best known for Murder On Music Row, his award-winning, controversial indictment of the Nashville pop invasion, covered by Alan Jackson and George Strait. Diamond Rio, Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Alison Krauss, and John Anderson have recorded his songs. Larry's old friend Ricky Skaggs made a #1 hit of “Highway 40 Blues,” a Cordle composition. Young stars like Chris LeDoux, Rebecca Lynn Howard and Kevin Denney have also covered his material. Larry's songs have been recorded on some 50 million albums, so far. “It sounds better on paper than it actually is!” he grins.

Several of Larry's original tunes appear on Songs From The Workbench, released by Lonesome Standard Time in September 2002. The band recently finished an album for CMH Records--a tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd, with vocals. “I don't want to run up and down the road doin' Lynyrd Skynyrd songs for the rest of my life,” Larry comments, “but the thing is, I want to try to get the band into some other venues!”

For just over a decade, Larry's lived in Hendersonville, TN, a Nashville suburb, with his wife, Wanda, and their 12-year-old daughter Kelvey. Johnny Cash lives up the road; other Hendersonville residents include his old pal Ricky, David Parmley, and Jim & Jesse McReynolds, before Jim passed away. The neighborhood is beautiful, Larry reports. “There's a farm in front of me that's got cows on it, and all the lots out here are one acre, so you don't feel like you're pressed up against each other. I suppose it feels like being back on the farm.”

That old farm is sort of a refuge for Larry these days. “When I've got a minute to do anything, I go back up into the mountains to my mom and dad's. There's no cell phone reception there. They don't know what a computer is, thank God,” he says with a touch of relief. “Sometimes you have to bang yourself upside the head and get out and see some real people. That's the reason I go up to Daddy's: to see what regular old folks has got to say.”

Visit Larry online at www.larrycordle.com .