I’ve had occasion this week to speak with both Alan Bibey and Wayne Benson, two of the premier mandolinists playing bluegrass today. They are teaming up this year for a number of projects sure to be of interest to students of the mandolin, and folks who just love to hear them played.

Within the next several months, Al and Wayne will start work on a new twin mandolin project for Pinecastle Records. Their intent is to write some new music together, and arrange some more with harmony parts for mandolin duets.

Al said that they will have Ron Stewart on banjo, Stewart Duncan on fiddle, Tony Rice on guitar and Barry Bales on bass. He and Wayne will be featured on nearly all the members of the mandolin family and the material is expected to be largely grassy with a few ventures just a bit outside.

If all goes well, you can hope to see this new mando duo CD in the spring of ‘09.

The discussions about the CD have led the pair to also team up for a number of mandolin workshops with the first scheduled for March 26 in Woodstock, GA. The format will have them teaching both an hour long beginner and an advanced/intermediate class following a Q&A with the two of them together. Students who take the beginner or advanced classes will have the chance to spend time with both Wayne and Alan, and the evening will conclude with a duo concert.

Anyone who would like to attend should contact Dan Connell at 678-643-7531. If you are interested in hosting one of their joint mandolin workshops, contact Alan for details.

IIIrd Tyme Out has just announced that mandolin player Wayne Benson will be returning to the band later this month. Wayne was in the band from 1992 to 2004. After leaving the band in 2004, Benson joined The John Cowan Band where he has been ever since. Benson now returns to IIIrd Tyme Out as Alan Perdue leaves to concentrate on two businesses that he owns.

We are sad to see Alan leave, and have cherished the time that we have gotten to play music with him, but are as equally excited to have Wayne re-joining the band.

Benson’s first show back with the band will be at Bass Mountain Park in Burlington, NC on May 25, 2007.

Some of the more popular bluegrass instrumental projects of recent years have been in a Pinecastle series which came to be called the Bluegrass Annual projects, as each was designated by the year in which it was released. Seven CDs were eventually included, starting with Bluegrass ‘95, and concluding with Bluegrass 2001.

The series had a largely accidental genesis, initially recorded as a solo project for Clay Jones, now guitarist with Mountain Heart. When that project was finished, Clay made a decision to work outside of music, and Pinecastle was prepared to shelve the recording, seeing no venue to promote it. Scott Vestal, a long time friend of Clay’s who played banjo on the project, intervened with the label and convinced them to release it as an instrumental CD so that the artists who recorded with Clay (Adam Steffey, Wayne Benson, Aubrey Haynie, Barry Bales), could at least offer it for sale at their shows.

Scott was quoted in an August 2000 article in Banjo NewsLetter about this, and how he came to take charge of creating and producing an instrumental release for them for each of the next six years.

“I talked with Tom Riggs at Pinecastle and suggested that we release it in some form with a generic title so that at least the guys on the record could sell it at shows. I just threw out the name, Bluegrass ‘95 and he liked it. No one expected it to sell so well but, when it did, Pinecastle turned the concept over to me and asked me to do one each year.”

Each was successful in its own right, but as the CD inventory for each title sold through, Pinecastle has elected to let them go out of print. Bluegrass 2001 is the only one still available as an audio CD.

They released a compilation from those CDs in the summer of 2005, called Ultimate Pickin, which featured 20 tracks taken from those recordings, and now a second compilation is out with a bit broader range that includes more tracks from those popular CDs.

The newly released More Ultimate Pickin also contains 20 tracks, taken from the aforementioned Vestal-produced projects, and other Pinecastle CDs like Bobby Osborne & Jesse McReynolds’ Masters Of The Mandolin, among others. A full track listing and a few audio samples can be found on the Pinecastle site.

You can still obtain the individual Bluegrass Annual projects as digital downloads in the iTunes Music Store. Follow the links below to find them in iTunes.

Just a quick update to our mention earlier this week about the birth of Hogan Wayne Benson, whose parents Wayne and Kristin Benson are well known to bluegrass fans.

There is a hospital photo of young master Benson up on Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard Time’s web site.

We just received news of the arrival of Hogan Wayne Benson, who was born on October 6, 2006. His parents are Kristin Scott Benson, banjo picker with Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard Time, and Wayne Benson, mandolinist with The John Cowan Band.

If ever a child was born with an impeccable bluegrass pedigree, young Hogan may be the one. Our most sincere congratulations go out to Kristin and Wayne, who we trust will be as exceptional as parents as they have been on stage and in the studio.

It is announced on the Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard Time web site that Kristin Benson is expecting. Kristin plays banjo with the band, and is also on the faculty of the bluegrass music program at East Tennessee State University. The young master Benson, who should arrive in October, will have an impeccable bluegrass pedigree. His dad is Wayne Benson, mandolinist with The John Cowan Band and a former member of IIIrd Tyme Out. This will be their first child.

We have no word yet about Kristin’s schedule with the band, but we will be sure to pass along any information we receive.

On behalf of The Bluegrass Blog, we extend our congratulations to these two fine young people, who also happen to be first rate musicians, and who represent our music at its best.