Picking a restaurant to have lunch with the five members of the Randy Rogers Band is easy. These guys like beer. They also like margaritas and Tex-Mex cuisine. So Chuy's Dallas at Knox-Henderson seems a good choice. Over pork tacos, fajitas and a few drinks, Randy Rogers, Brady Black, Les Lawless, Jon Richardson and Geoffrey Hill cut up and finish each other's sentences.

But later, inside a chauffeured limousine rented to transport them from a performance at a Gun Barrel City honky-tonk to Dallas, the guys get serious about their music. The topic never strays far from their just-released second major-label album, Randy Rogers Band. Produced by fellow Texan Radney Foster, who also produced 2004's Rollercoaster and 2006's Just a Matter of Time, the new disc is undoubtedly their most country effort. It expertly merges the raw spirit of their native state with the melodic polish of Nashville. Mr. Rogers even pens a few tunes with noted Nashville songwriters such as Stephony Smith, George Ducas and Gary Nicholson.

"We are all influenced by traditional-sounding country music," says Mr. Rogers. "We all think country music should be that. It's not that the Randy Rogers Band is a steel guitar-driven band. We have a fiddle player. But we all respect honest, true, gritty country music."

Mr. Hill immediately pipes in.

"Randy has always been a country songwriter," he says. "We've always been a country band. I play rock guitar. A lot of our band is kind of rock-based, but we come from country roots. ... I don't think this new record is really different from the rest just because we've always been a country band."

There's a sense of determination, if not ambition, to be considered a full-fledged country music entity, not one of those roots-driven hybrids so prevalent in the Lone Star state. Just a Matter of Time, which produced two Billboard-charting singles, was the record that took the quintet's music to a national level. It helped them gross $2.5 million from touring in a year, according to the band's Web site, and it broadened their artistic reach.

"What that record did for us is, we can go play in Wisconsin or, I think we were in Minnesota last week, and people know the work that this band has done," says Mr. Rogers. "That record, as a whole for us, opened up doors that were closed before. Did it sell platinum? No. Could it have sold it? Absolutely. I believe in that record and still stand by that record. It did exactly what we thought that it would do. We didn't have huge, lofty expectations. ... Our expectations are to make another record."

Growth is key, but so is success. They eventually want the million-sellers, the radio hits and the huge crowds. But, as Mr. Black says, "We're not going to compromise our integrity to get a No. 1 single."

Still, for these Texans all in their late 20s to early 30s and living in the Austin, San Marcos and New Braunfels area, hitting the road to play more than 250 dates a year and making great country albums is now their life's work.

"We've been so lucky," says Mr. Rogers. "I think all of us feel that way every time we get to take the stage with somebody that we admire or go make another record. The harder you work, the luckier you get."