By day, he's a financial advisor with the Cook Cole Pillow & Rapert Group, a Merrill Lynch local office. But after 5 p.m. and on the weekends, Rapert is a bona fide old time fiddle playin' travelin' preacher man.

While he enjoys playing fiddle at his home church, Conway First Assembly of God, The Rock Solid Church, Rapert's ministry and music has taken him from state prisons to Ghana, Africa, and back to country churches in north Arkansas, like banjo-playing Lester Chisum's Falling Waters Chapel near Jasper.

It was Falling Waters that inspired Rapert to write "Run the Streets of Gold," the title song from his new bluegrass gospel compact disc.

The song took 20 minutes to write.

"I don't sit down to write a song," said Rapert, who also wrote "He's Watching Over Me" for the new CD, which was recorded by J.J. Bayliss, Chad Lambert and Darren Dather of CDJ Productions.

CDJ mostly records contemporary Christian music and had never recorded bluegrass before working with Rapert.

Nevertheless, Rapert, along with Keith Gresham, who played bass, Tim McCool, who sang and played banjo, and guitarist Ronnie Taylor, along with backup singers Jetta McCool, Sandra Taylor and Ellen McNeely, Rapert's pastor's wife, met one afternoon in Rapert's church sanctuary and recorded 15 songs in three and half hours. Half of the tunes they had never performed before.

Though the CD is credited to Jason Rapert and Friends, Rapert insists it is a group affair.

"Jason Rapert and Friends came out of a lack of a name," he said, adding that the group now goes by Living Grace.

Since the CD was released, radio stations in Jonesboro, Little Rock and Russellville have picked up the CD and played it.

"It's been interesting how it's gone out," Rapert said.

Proceeds of the sale of the CD will go to Holy Ghost Ministries, Rapert said.

Rapert said he inherited his interest in music from his family.

"When I was growing up, any get together, when the eating was over, we'd play music," he said.

Rapert grew up in Supply, Ark., in Randolph County, near the Missouri border and started playing fiddle when he was 10 years old.

"It sounds like cats fighting when you first start," he said.

He learned to play the fiddle by ear from his late grandfather, Conway Jarrett from Warm Springs, in northeast Arkansas. The first tune he learned to play was an old Bob Wills tune called "Faded Love."

When he was 12, he got serious about the fiddle, going to bed and waking up with music playing.

Along with Grandpa Jarrett, Rapert's favorite fiddler was Dusty Rhodes, who, along with his brother, Speck Rhodes, performed the Rhodes Show, and on the Grand Ole Opry.

"Dusty was my hero," Rapert said, adding that Bobby Hicks and Kenny Baker were also fiddle greats he listened to.

"When my fiddling took off, I can tell you the very song," said Rapert, recalling his first successful double-stop fiddle lick on "Precious Memories."

He developed a style of his own, which he said is closer to old time fiddle than bluegrass.

Boone Carlin, a Fort Smith fiddle player, told him he thought Rapert had a bit of a Missouri shuffle in his style.

That might make sense, given his hometown is near the Missouri border, Rapert said.

When Rapert was 18, his focus shifted from music to his new marriage with wife, Laurie.

"When I got married, the fiddle went under the bed," Rapert said.

But Rapert soon saw an ad for a local fiddlers association and fell in with a group of Conway musicians, including Sam McCaskill, Faril Simpson and Bill Whiteneck, and played at local events Toad Suck Daze and 'Brier Fest.

"Over the years, music has opened a lot of doors because of that connection," he said. "When I walk into a group of musicians you immediately feel welcome."

When the couple graduated from the University of Central Arkansas in 1994, they moved to northwest Arkansas, where Rapert worked for an insurance company.

Soon thereafter, they were invited to a party in an old one-room churchhouse near Pea Ridge, where Jason heard the group, Shady Grove Bluegrass. When the mandolin player, H.K. Scott, learned Rapert was a fiddle player, he asked him if he could play "Tennessee Wagoner?"

Of course, Rapert could. Two weeks later, he was invited to audition for the group, which he joined until he and Laurie moved back to Conway in 1997.

Today, Rapert is as avid an instrument collector as he is a musician, with a collection of seven fiddles, two mandolins and four guitars ... more than enough for a cacophonous yet somehow banjo-free jam session.

"They all sound different to me," Rapert explained. "Every one has a good story."

There are two fiddles that he bought at an estate sale.

The fiddles were made by the late Elmer Adlai Elliott of Faulkner County in 1960. Elliott was living in Kendal, Fla., when the fiddles were made.

Rapert also has a portrait of Elliott building a fiddle that painted in 1959 by H.I. Brown.

"It's very rare that you know where a fiddle actually comes from," Rapert said, adding that it's also likely that the portrait shows his fiddles being built.

Rapert took the fiddles to George Chesnut of Nashville, Tenn., to be repaired.

Chesnut suggested he leave the fiddles in a "soundbox," or enclosed cabinet with a speaker playing music, to break them in.

"I don't stress them out with anything but bluegrass," Rapert said, closing the door on the speakerbox, which was playing Rhonda Vincent's bluegrass band.

Fiddles are very sensitive to climate changes, he said.

"I treat 'em like a baby ... not too wet, not too dry, too hot or too cold," he said.

Also in the collection is a fiddle that he bought while on vacation in Tralee, Ireland, in County Cork.

Another one is a copy of a Hopf, and a Stradivarius copy that is a German-made conservatory violin, that Rapert picked up in Mountain View.

Though there's no technical difference between a violin and a fiddle, Rapert refers folks who ask to the old yarn that a violin goes in a case, whereas you put a fiddle in a toe sack.

Each instrument has a distinct sound, Rapert said.

"They do have voices," he said. "I like a mellow deep tone ... not too tinny."

The most prized instrument in his collection is one that he inherited from his grandfather, Conway Jarrett, who promised his fiddle to his first grandchild that showed interest in the fiddle.

For encouraging his love of music, Rapert returned the favor by taking his grandfather, who had seen Bob Wills live in concert in Coffeeville, Kan., back in Wills' World War II-era heyday, to see Bob Wills' Texas Playboys band perform in Morrilton.

When his grandfather passed away, Rapert paid tribute to him, playing "Amazing Grace" and the first song his grandfather taught him, "Faded Love," beside the casket.

Just as his grandfather passed on his music to his grandson, Rapert's daughters, Grace Anne, 5, and three-year old Olivia, are growing to love Daddy's music.

"They love the music," he said, adding that Grace wants lessons.

But Rapert said they should enjoy it and explore it out of their own free will, not because he does.

"I want them to love it because they love it, not because Dad loves it."

For more information on "Run the Streets of Gold" or Holy Ghost Ministries, visit www.holyghostministries.org.

(Staff Writer Rob O'Connor can be reached at rob.oconnor@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1240.)