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Steamboat Springs — Since he last played Steamboat Springs in June, Kort McCumber - peddler of Americana and player of many stringed instruments - has finished up a sixth record and won a songwriting contest at the Founders Title Folk and Bluegrass Festival in Utah.

On Saturday, McCumber will loop back through town to the Old Town Pub (where he played Tuesday) with recording partner and bandmate Jim Gilmour.

Between spending time in the studio and heading to Steamboat for his Tuesday show, McCumber talked to 4 Points about his new record, recent accomplishments and finding Americana.

4 POINTS: What's this new record, "Lickskillet Road," like?

McCUMBER: It's kind of roots Americana country. Ten of the 12 tracks are original tunes, recorded mostly in Vermont. I've done the last couple of records there, and I think the newest one is the best so far.

4 POINTS: So when you say Americana, what do you mean by that?

McCUMBER: My version is blues, rock, country, folk, a little bit of Celtic Irish stuff - to me Americana is putting all those things together.

4 POINTS: Starting out as a classical musician, how did you come around to bluegrass?

McCUMBER: I grew up playing classical music - started on piano when I was 5 and cello when I was 8. I didn't started playing guitar until halfway through college, recorded my first record in the fall of 1999 and started picking up instruments from there. Then I moved from Gainesville, Fla. to Nashville (Tenn.). While I was there, I didn't like the new country stuff at all. It seems more like pop, so the old stuff is what I gravitated toward.

Once I started playing acoustic guitar, I started writing kind of folk singer-songwriter music.

Pretty much anywhere you go in the mountains across the country, there's a big acoustic bluegrass scene.

4 POINTS: Why do you think that is, that bluegrass is big in the mountains?

McCUMBER: People say it got popular with "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" I think it's always been bigger than most people thought, even though it's still pretty underground.

It's good music to play. It's great to get together with other musicians, and that seems to be one of the easiest, most community styles of music, more than just setting up drums and tearing into rock 'n' roll stuff.

I love getting together with people and just picking acoustic music - you can always have an acoustic instrument and just pick it up and play.