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.