Make no mistake - Randy Travis is not getting back to his roots with Worship and Faith, his new collection of 20 gospel and praise songs. For one thing, as one of the most popular, unmistakably country singers ever, he never left his roots. Besides, Randy Travis didn't grow up singing songs like "Shall We Gather at the River?" and "How Great Thou Art," because Randy Travis didn't grow up in church.

"Man, no," says Travis, "I grew up in bars. I grew up singing Merle Haggard and George Jones and Hank Williams. I didn't know anything about singing any kind of church songs."

Born on May 4, 1959 in rural Marshville, North Carolina, Randy was the second of six children and throughout his unruly early years, often found himself on the verge of serious trouble.

"My childhood years had no real form of religion. I went to church some, but, as they say in the South, it didn't take. I drifted about as far away from that as you could get."

Instead, Travis's adolescence was filled with alcohol, drugs, petty crime and general delinquency, including the time he took his brother's 396 Chevelle from the schoolyard and led police on a high-speed chase that reached 145 miles per hour. "Down old country roads, that's moving on pretty well," Travis recalls. "I finally went into a long curve and lost it."

Before Travis pulled out of his downward spiral of youthful crime, he was convicted of breaking and entering, larceny and carrying a concealed weapon. However, for his positive contributions to society as an adult later in life, Travis received a pardon for his offenses in 1999 from then-North Carolina governor James Hunt. Travis' true spiritual awakening didn't come until the mid-1980's, around the time he started recording classic country songs like "On the Other Hand," "1982" and "Diggin' Up Bones." "In my early to mid-20s, I started reading the Bible," he says. "I was amazed at how it brought this calming effect over me. I hadn't known much peace of mind for quite awhile." Travis also started attending church regularly for the first time in his life. At the same time, Travis' relaxed, drawling baritone - often described as a cross between George Jones and Merle Haggard - was creating a sensation the likes of which country music had never seen before. Travis topped the charts with singles like "Forever and Ever, Amen," "Hard Rock Bottom of Your Heart" and "Look Heart, No Hands." Albums like Storms of Life and Always and Forever sold millions of copies - in all, Travis has 10 gold or platinum albums. He won three Grammys, three Dove Awards, five Country Music Association awards, and eight from the Academy of Country Music.

Travis added a new dimension to his career in 2000 when he released his first album of country-gospel songs, Inspirational Journey. Three years after that, "Three Wooden Crosses," a tale of surprising redemption from his second inspirational album, Rise and Shine, returned Travis to the top of the country charts. "Three Wooden Crosses" gave Travis his first Number One hit in four years, and it was the only single from a gospel label ever to top the country charts.

"It surprised me," Travis says. "I thought a lot of radio programmers might try to avoid it because it came from a gospel label, but the reception was incredible."

While Inspirational Journey and Rise and Shine featured mostly new material, Worship and Faith is filled with classic hymns and worship standards. Travis' choices include old American hymns ("Softly and Tenderly," "Sweet By and By"), country-gospel favorites ("Turn the Radio On," "I'll Fly Away"), even modern praise songs ("Open the Eyes of My Heart," "Above All").

Travis and Kyle Lehning, who produced Travis' biggest hits, matched Travis' unmistakable voice with sparkling country and bluegrass arrangements, using only acoustic instruments - fiddles, dobro, harmonica, upright bass, even the occasional dulcimer and autoharp. Worship and Faith features guest appearances by John Anderson on "Just a Closer Walk With Thee," Third Day frontman Mac Powell on "Love Lifted Me" and Joy Lynn White on "I'll Fly Away." Travis and Lehning recorded most of the album in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the singer has lived for the past five years.

Since Travis often was familiar with little more than the titles for these songs, he approached Worship and Faith much as he would any of his albums. He searched a variety of sources for songs, from leather-bound songbooks to dusty records. The album-opening "He's My Rock, My Sword, My Shield," for instance, he learned from an old recording by Ethel Waters, a famed jazz and Broadway singer of the 1920s who traveled with the Billy Graham Crusades later in her life.

"The way we did it, it hits you more on the upbeat, happy side," he says. "Still, there are some wonderful things within the lyrics.

"I chose these songs because, for one thing, I felt they fit me as a singer. I did them because I liked the songs. I listen for songs that speak to me, that say something I can relate to, or wish I could relate to. I like songs that hit me in such a way they make me think, 'Man, everybody should be able to relate to that.'" Because Travis came to most of these songs as an adult, he brings a freshness to the most familiar songs on Worship and Faith. These songs are not ingrained in his mind from years of repetition. His renditions sing with the personality of the people who wrote them - Fanny J. Crosby, the prolific, blind songwriter who penned "Blessed Assurance," or circuit-riding preacher Josiah Alwood, who envisioned Heaven in "The Unclouded Day." Travis treats the material as songs, not as relics, and their messages speak clearly to him and through him.

Though Travis learned most of these songs fairly late in his life, some of them he's known for a long time. Of the Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey's "Peace in the Valley," he says, "That was about the only hymn I knew. My grandmother used to request that song." And there's "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," which Travis has sung from the stage of the Grand Ole Opry: "You're going to have to do that one at some point in time if you are a country singer."

And Travis still considers himself a country singer, even though his most recent albums have given him something of a parallel career.

"I'd never heard the term 'music ministry' before, but it has turned out to be just that," he says. "Good things are coming from that, and it would be wrong to walk away from it. I'm still doing country shows, and I want to record more country. But I want to continue doing gospel music, also."

Travis says he's wanted to record an album like Worship and Faith for a long time. "For years, people on the road would come up to us and say, 'When are you going to do a gospel album?'" he says. "But when we started this project, I didn't have a clue what to do. After having been in church for a while, obviously, I was far more familiar with the songs."

No matter when Travis learned these songs, he inhabits them now. Those songs have now become a part of his life, and in their timeless, redemptive message Randy Travis discovered roots he never even realized he had.