The Ola Belle Reed Homecoming Festival is sponsoring the raffle of a Wayne Henderson D-18 guitar to raise funds to further and preserve the music of their namesake.

Ola Belle Reed was a singer, songwriter and banjo player who performed with her family as the North Carolina Ridge Runners starting in the 1950s. She passed away in 2002, and the festival was established to help keep her music alive.

As they put it on their site:

The Festival will feature the music of Ola Belle’s husband and sons, musicians who played with her over the years, newer groups that are carrying on her tradition, and local talent. It will also celebrate the life and philosophy of a woman who spent a lifetime “tearing down the fences that fence us all in.”

Wayne Henderson’s guitars are made by hand in his small shop, with waiting lists of several years the norm. He was the subject of a book published in 2005 called Clapton’s Guitar, by Allen St. John, which chronicles the building of a custom Henderson guitar for the rock legend.

You can find out more about the raffle, and purchase tickets online, on the Ola Belle Reed festival web site.

Sam Bush will be a guest on the November 25th edition of A Prairie Home Companion on National Public Radio. The show will be broadcast live from Cincinnati, OH, and will also include performances by noted guitarist/luthier Wayne Henderson and steel guitarist Buddy Emmons.

The show is carried on 580 public radio affiliate stations, on the Armed Forces Network, and on Sirius Satellite Radio’s Channel 134. Broadcast times vary from one affiliate to another, with many carrying the live feed on Saturday afternoons, and others running it instead early on Sunday afternoon.

The show will also be webcast live (5:00 – 7:00 p.m. CST), and can be accessed using Windows Media Player on the Prairie Home Companion web site. Past shows are archived on the PHC web site, with audio files usually available by the Monday morning following a weekend broadcast.