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On its latest CD, "Reinventing the Wheel," which will be released later this month, the Western swing group "Asleep at the Wheel," does the Guy Clark song, "The Cape," about a kid who keeps trying to fly because he doesn't know he can't.

It must be a very personal song for Ray Benson, who helped start Asleep at the Wheel in 1970. Thirty-seven years of doing hot fiddlin' tunes in a watered-down, pop-music world is akin to putting your faith in a flour-sack cape and jumping off a garage, as the kid in the song does.

Benson put his faith in Western swing, a gumbo of country music and various styles of jazz, pop and blues, music played for dancers and made most popular by the late Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys band in the 1930s and '40s.

Asleep at the Wheel's adherence to Western swing has won the band nine Grammy Awards but little airtime on radio and no huge-selling albums.

"The thing that's kept me going is A, I love to do it, and B, I don't know what else to do with myself," Benson said during a phone interview from Austin, the city Asleep at the Wheel calls home.

Asleep at the Wheel is backing up country music legends Ray Price, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard at the Santa Ana Star Center in Rio Rancho on Sunday.

Usually Asleep at the Wheel performs in smaller venues, clubs and halls that accommodate 750 to 2,000 people, places like Albuquerque's El Rey, which the group played in November.

"I see a real resurgence in Western swing," said Benson, who turns 56 next week. "A lot of young people are playing fiddles, and our audience continues to grow every day here in the modern era. We've got older fans, in their 60s to their 80s; fans my age, in the boomer generation; and younger fans in their 20s and 30s, like some of our band members."

But he's jumped off enough garages to know where the ground is.

"You're not going to see Justin Timberlake singing Bob Wills' songs or hear Western swing on top 40 country radio," he said. "Country radio is involved in trying to sell radio time, and what they want is (listeners) 18-35 who don't know anything about country music."

The thing Benson likes best about "The Last of the Breed Tour," 15 cities in 17 days, is that Price, Nelson and Haggard are the heart and soul of country music and everyone of them connected to Wills, the king of Western swing.

"Ray Price was (country music icon) Hank William's opening act," Benson said. "And Ray's music of the '50s and '60s, with its twin fiddles, was a direct link to Bob Wills. He was the next step from Hank Williams and Bob Wills."

Early in his career, Nelson played guitar for Price's Cherokee Cowboys band, and in 1973 Nelson took his version of Wills' song "Stay All Night (Stay a Little Longer)" into the top 40.

"And the first thing Merle Haggard did when he made it big (in 1970) with `Okie From Muskogee,' when he could have done anything he wanted, he made tribute albums to (Blue Yodeler) Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills," Benson said.

"Haggard is someone today's country stars should look at," Benson said. "He understands the importance of what came before."

Of course, nobody understands that better than Benson and Asleep at the Wheel.

One of the group's latest projects is "A Ride With Bob," a stage play with music that has played at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., among other places.

Benson co-wrote the play, which is a tip of the cowboy hat to Wills. Benson plays himself in the show.

"The premise is the conversation I never had with Bob Wills," he said. "The play's done incredibly well. I'd like to film it."

Why not? Too late to stop jumping off garages now.