The more, the merrier! That’s my personal reaction each time there is news of another mainstream pop or country artist who dips a toe into the bluegrass realm. Some, like Merle Haggard, come to bluegrass as an artistic exercise late in their career, while others are returning to their roots with a grassy outing.

Such is the case with country hit maker Aaron Tippin, who is finishing up a bluegrass project now for a 2007 release on his label, Nippit Records. When I spoke with him about it earlier in the week, he was genuinely excited about the CD, both artistically and because he was eager to let his fans and the country music media know that he had been a bluegrass guy from way back.

Aaron said that he was a country music fan growing up in the South Carolina mountains, but once he was exposed to live bluegrass, he knew he had been bitten by the bug.

“I had a high school teacher who would take a bunch of us guys out to hear bluegrass, and I fell in love with the sound. I started learning to play banjo, and before long, we had put together a little band. We called ourselves The Dixie Ridge Runners. We weren’t great by any means - most of the time we were just plain bad - but we had a bunch of fun.”

All of the rhythm tracks are finished, and with only Aaron’s vocals left to be tracked. Pickers featured on the CD include Charlie Cushman on banjo, Ward Stout on fiddle, Danny Roberts on mandolin, Mike Bub on bass and Jeff White on guitar.

The as yet untitled project will include a few original songs, but it will mostly consist of bluegrass classics and songs that will be accessible for his manistream country fans.

“A lot of people who come to my shows may not be serious bluegrass fans, so we wanted to make sure to record songs that would be familiar to them. One that we had a lot of fun with was Petticoat Junction, the theme to the old TV show that Flatt & Scruggs recorded. We also cut a bluegrass version of Sonny & Cher’s, I Got You Babe, and I’m sure that bluegrass fans will recognize our cut on Brown Mountain Light, one of my favorite songs of all time.”

Tippin’s current album, Now & Then, is a departure in itself. It’s the first since he launched his own label, and it has more of a southern rock edge than his previous country projects, six of which went gold, with one platinum. Following this rockier release with a bluegrass CD shows that his newfound independence is something he takes seriously.

I joked with Aaron when he told me that he would be including songs from the bluegrass project in his stage show, suggesting that he might dust of the old banjo and strap it on once again on stage.

“I don’t think you’ll see that happen. I never got very far on banjo, and working in the studio with Charlie Cushman really made that plain to me. I just love bluegrass music, and am delighted to have a chance to be singing it again. I can’t wait to see what people think when the CD is released.”

He wasn’t sure when I asked if a video from the bluegrass project would be forthcoming, but he did say that they filmed a large portion of the recording sessions.

Aaron promised to keep us posted about the CD’s progress, and we’ll update when audio samples are available online.

Here’s a hearty “Welcome Back!” to Aaron Tippin from The Bluegrass Blog.

American Made Banjo Company has announced that their first new Kel Kroydon banjo for 2007 will be an artist model for celebrated Nashville banjo picker Charlie Cushman, built to his custom specifications.

This new Cushman model will be a mahogany banjo, fitted with AMB’s Dannick tone ring, and featuring an ebony fingerboard with their Kel Kroydon Style 10 inlay, and the Style 10 resonator overlay. Charlie will set up each of these banjos himself, and sign them before they are shipped.

They will be built by Robin Smith of Heartland Banjo & Guitar.

No pictures of the Cushman model yet on the Kel Kroydon site, but they will surely show up there before long.

From Ronnie Reno, via J.D. Rhynes, who posted on the California Bluegrass Association web site, comes word that Merle Haggard is working on a bluegrass project.

That CBA news posting elicited a response from Elida Ickes on the CBA message board that her son, Rob, was playing dobro on the Haggard bluegrass sessions.

Rob said initially they all sat in a circle and just jammed on a few tunes that Merle was interested in doing. (Other players are: Aubrie Haynie, Marty Stuart, Ben Isaacs, and Charlie Cushman) Hope I spelled everyone’s name correctly and remembered everyone that was there. Then Merle said he liked this and suggested that they record just sitting in a circle jamming!!! That is what they did so it will be mostly live taping!! Rob said the first song they did was “I Wonder Where You Are Tonight.”

Another song Rob really liked is a new one that Merle wrote called, “Pray.” Rob said the whole time he could not believe he was sitting in the circle “jamming” with Merle Haggard. Again, it was the highlight of Rob’s life. He goes into the studio again today to finish up. They did 8 songs yesterday and hope to do 4 or 5 more today.

You can read the news posting on CBA’s site, and the follow-up bulletin board discussion there as well. We will try to contact some of the players and find out more about this project, which I am certainly eager to hear.

Thanks to Megan Lynch who first alerted us to this story, and Rick Cornish and Craig Wilson with CBA for their help finding the original post in their archives.

We posted earlier this month with news that Vince Gill’s upcoming tour would be including some bluegrass in the show. CMT.com has a news feature posted yesterday which expands on this story a bit.

We had mentioned in that earlier post that Gill was set to release a mighty ambitious project, a box set which will include four CDs (43 tracks), all of which are new recordings of songs which he had written or co-written. CMT explains that each of the four disks is themed, and one is entitled Little Brother - The Acoustic Record.

The tour, starting 10/16 in New York, will be segmented into four “acts,” matching the four themed CDs in the box set release, ensuring that multi-instrumentalist Charlie Cushman, who has been booked for the tour, will have his hands full on stage. Bluegrasser Jeff White, a regular member of Gill’s band, will be on guitar for this tour, which will also include fiddler Deanie Richardson, who has been touring with Dale Ann Bradley this season.

Read the story in full on CMT.com.

If you follow the music industry or country music news, you may have noted that country music superstar Vince Gill has some mighty ambitious plans for his next CD, These Days. It’s a four CD set to be released on October 17, but not as a greatest hits or career-wide retrospective. This multi-disk project contains 43 new tracks, each of them written or co-written by Gill himself. We were impressed when Tim O’Brien released two CDs simultaneously last year, but this really wins the prize!

Long time bluegrass fans know that Vince got his start playing bluegrass, including stints with Bluegrass Alliance, Boone Creek, and Byron Berline’s Sundance before moving towards country rock as a member of Pure Prarie League. The new project indicates that the material will be a mix of styles, with bluegrass included. The Del McCoury Band are listed as guest performers, and with Vince’s own demonstrated ability as a picker and singer, one imagines that the bluegrass that’s featured will be solid stuff.

Gill recently announced a tour in support of the CD, and the press release also mentioned that bluegrass music would be featured on the show. When we learned last week that Nashville banjo man Charlie Cushman had been hired for the tour, there was no doubt that it was true.

The tour dates can be found on the Vince Gill website.