Mandolin player Mike Compton says "life is good," and who can argue with the native of Meridian, Miss., who lives outside of Nashville, Tenn., near Roy Acuff's former home.

He just finished a CD with Elvis Costello, performed in Australia in February, toured for several years with John Hartford, played mandolin on the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack and teaches mandolin to about 60 students by webcam on the Internet.

Mr. Compton will perform at 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday at the Eryn Eubanks and The Family Fold's Old-Time Music Festival and, with David Long, will teach a free mandolin workshop during the day.

For almost two years, Mr. Compton has taught mandolin lessons from his home through the webcasts.

"Not everyone takes every day," he said. "They include mamas with babies and people with difficult job hours. I give lessons at 30 minutes at a time with my first starting at 8 in the morning and my last starting at 8:30 at night.

"I have them all over the U.S. and in Canada, one lady in Tasmania and another in India who originally is from Vermont who started taking lessons from me in Tokyo."

Judging by the way he sounded on the phone and by what Ms. Eubanks says about him, Mr. Compton really cares about his fans. Mr. Compton said he learned that partly from Mr. Hartford (Gentle on My Mind ), who learned it from the king of country music, Roy Acuff.

"Hartford said Acuff more or less lectured him about that one night," Mr. Compton said. "Roy said, 'All of those people out there in that audience are the ones making your living. You give them all the spare time you've got.

" 'If you go out there and be nice to one, chances are the next time you come around they will bring some more people with them. But if you make one mad, they'll circulate it around and you may have 50 less people at your next show.' "

Mr. Compton worked off and on with Hartford until the songwriter-fiddler-banjo player's death in 2001.

"John was good to all of us (in the band)," Mr. Compton said, "but John's deal was about John. He'd kind of balk at it when it wasn't going his way. ... He loved playing old-time fiddle tunes about as good as anything there is. He loved that river (as a licensed steamboat captain), but he loved pulling that (fiddle) bow, too."

Mr. Compton's mandolin playing is heard in the opening of The Soggy Mountain Boys' hit version of I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow on the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack. He also played on the follow-up Down From the Mountain traditional folk album and was on the resulting tour with Ricky Skaggs, Patty Loveless and others.

His relationship with O Brother music producer T-Bone Burnett led to Mr. Compton's recording in early April with British rocker Mr. Costello on an acoustic CD that Mr. Burnett produced.

Mr. Costello's knowledge of country music was impressive.

"He knows a ton of old country songs," Mr. Compton said. "He recently did a Hazel Dickens session that (producer) Todd Phillips was putting together, a project of all Hazel Dickens songs. Todd said not only did Elvis agree to do the recording session, he told Todd which songs that Hazel wrote that he wanted to do. Todd said he didn't figure Elvis Costello would know who Hazel Dickens was, much less any of her material."

Don Rhodes has written about country music for 37 years. He can be reached at (706) 823-3214 or at don.rhodes@morris.com.