Guitar legend Eric Clapton will chat with fans on the Internet at 7 p.m. EDT Monday (July 24). Clapton, whose most recent album, Riding With the King with blues legend B.B. King, is one of the biggest selling albums of the summer, will chat for a half-hour on AOL chat (keyword: live). ... The Lowell (Mass.) Folk Festival will be webcast live this year on the Web site of Boston's WGBH (89.7 FM). The three-day, six-stage festival — with performances by Appalachian Trail, Henry Butler and Texas Playboys — will be held at Boarding House Park in Beat writer Jack Kerouac's hometown July 28–30. ...

Songwriter Laurie Lewis and singer Tom Rozum will host two river rafting trips/concerts, "Bluegrass on White Water," Aug. 4–9 and Aug. 30–Sept. 1. The trips will be down the Salmon River and Tuolumne River, respectively. Check www.echotrips.com for more information. ...

John Lee Hooker has booked an appearance Nov. 4 in Jackson, Calif., at the Jackson Rancheria Casino, according to his management. Health concerns recently have forced the bluesman to cancel dates in Europe. ... Seen in the audience at the Bob Dylan concert Tuesday (July 18) in Toronto: fellow folk legend Gordon Lightfoot. ...

Folk-pop duo the Indigo Girls recently recorded two new tracks — "Leaving" and "Devotion" — for a 16-song compilation called Radio Box: A Retrospective, due Oct. 17, according to Epic Records. Reissues of their first four albums along with new art, liner notes and additional songs will accompany the release. ...

Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam, will be interviewed Wednesday (July 19), on WMGK 102.9 FM in Philadelphia. The former pop star will answer questions from listeners and has promised to clear up all rumors surrounding his 1981 self-imposed hiatus. Islam has been in the public eye again with last week's deportation from Israel over government accusations of his support of Muslim terrorist organizations. Also, on a more musical bent, there's the recent release of a greatest-hits album. ...

Medeski Martin & Wood, the Ravi Coltrane Quartet and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown will be among the 48 acts at the Kansas City (Mo.) Blues and Jazz Festival on July 21–23. Fifty thousand people are expected to attend the event, which will have three stages, six musical workshops, a rain tent and a late-night jam session with violinist Claude "Fiddler" Williams and pianist Henry Butler. Other artists performing at the festival include the Fabulous Thunderbirds, the Pat Morrissey Quintet,

guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, Spyro Gyra and former

COLOR="#003163">Howlin' Wolf guitarist Hubert Sumlin. For more information, check out www.kcbluesjazz.org. ...

In other festival events this weekend, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Jesse Winchester and Blackie & the Rodeo Kings will perform at the Calgary Folk Music Festival at Prince's Island Park on July 20–23. The four-day festival boasts five stages, with each offering a different type of music. For more information visit www.calgaryfolkfest.com. ... Shemekia Copeland and W.C. Clark will be appearing at the Lehigh Valley Blues Festival July 22 in Whitehall, Pa., while Paul Rishell, Annie Raines and John Jackson will perform at the fourth annual Herndon Blues Fest in Frying Pan Park in Herndon, Va., on the same day. …

If you've got 12 hours to spare, check out broadcast.com's archived

webcast of Willie

Nelson's Fourth of July Family Picnic. The show featured

performances by Willie Nelson &

Family, Little Joe Y La

Familia, Mustang Sally

and the Blame, Jimmie

Dale Gilmore, Ray

Price and more than a dozen other acts. ...

Sue Foley will be

featured in "Dare To Dream," a photography book celebrating

contemporary Canadian female role models. The book will feature

100 women who are considered Canada's pre-eminent female

leaders. ... Classic albums by Eric

Clapton, Dire

Straits and Van

Halen will pave the way for a series of releases due this

fall from Warner Bros., dubbed Warner Remasters. The series, which

will debut on Sept. 19, offers the original artwork and liner notes

from the subject albums' vinyl releases, along with the remastered

albums themselves. Plans call for hundreds of titles to be released

eventually in this format. ...

The Whites, featuring

sisters Sharon and

Cheryl and their father,

Buck, have an album,

A Lifetime in the Making, due in stores Aug. 15 on Ceili Music.

The acoustic bluegrass album will have a guest vocal appearance

by Emmylou Harris on

"Fair and Tender Ladies," a song the Whites learned from the

Carter Family. The disc

also will feature a performance by bluegrass, folk and western swing

producer Jerry

Douglas. ... Harris also is due to narrate a biography of

Trisha Yearwood to be

broadcast on the Lifetime Channel on Tuesday (July 18). ...

Washburn Guitars is offering 243 Ryman limited edition acoustic

guitars. The guitars are made of church pew-styled seats from

Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. For more information or to purchase

one, call (615) 742-0105. ... The Oscar-nominated documentary "The

Buena Vista Social Club" will air this Wednesday on PBS. ...

Gillian Welch & David

Rawlings, Jimmie Dale

Gilmore, Kevin

Welch, Stacey

Earle, John

Cowan and Judith

Edelman are among the many roots artists appearing at

Winterhawk Festival from July 28–30 in Hillsdale, N.Y. The

festival's sister event, the 12th annual Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, will

take place July 21–23 in Hillsdale, with performances by

Janis Ian,

color="#003163">Patty Larkin,

color="#003163">Eddie From Ohio,

color="#003163">Dar Williams and others. ...

In Seattle, the lineup for the 30th edition of the far-ranging

Bumbershoot Festival, to be held Labor Day weekend (Sept.

1–4) has been announced. Among the performers are:

Tracy Chapman,

color="#003163">Elliott Smith,

color="#003163">Deke Dickerson and the Ecco-Fonics,

Iris Dement,

color="#003163">John Wesley Harding,

color="#003163">Freakwater,

color="#003163">Sally Timms,

color="#003163">Christy McWilson,

color="#003163">Ani DiFranco,

color="#003163">Bad Livers,

color="#003163">Kelly Joe Phelps,

color="#003163">Indigenous,

color="#003163">Robbie Fulks,

color="#003163">Maceo Parker,

color="#003163">Corey Harris and

color="#003163">Henry Butler, the

color="#003163">Paladins,

color="#003163">Elvin Bishop,

color="#003163">Ben Harper,

color="#003163">Nathan and the Zydeco Cha-Chas,

Jimmie Dale Gilmore,

Joan Osborne,

color="#003163">Martin Sexton,

color="#003163">Martha Wainwright,

color="#003163">Wylie & the Wild West and

color="#003163">Kristin Hersh. Advance tickets are on

sale, at $12 per day. More information can be found at

www.bumbershoot.org. ...

The Ventures'

color="#003163">Nokie Edwards,

color="#003163">Merle Travis' son

color="#003163">Thom Bresh,

color="#003163">Seymour Duncan, session man

Brent Mason and other hot-

shot guitarists are scheduled to share the stage with fingerpicker

extraordinaire Muriel

Anderson, still the only woman to win the National

Fingerpicking Guitar Championship. (She won in 1989.) The

occasion is Muriel Anderson's All-Star Guitar Night, scheduled for

July 21 at Nashville's Wild Horse Saloon. The get-together will be

webcast at songs.com. ...

Songwriter and guitarist Elvin

Bishop's recording of three sold-out shows at San

Francisco's Biscuit and Blues club in January with mentor

color="#003163">Little Smokey Smothers will be

released Aug. 1 by Alligator Records. That's My Partner!

honors Smothers' influence on Bishop from the time they spent

together in Chicago when Bishop was a student at the University of

Chicago in the early '60s. In the '60s, Bishop began an

apprenticeship in the blues that led him to become a founding

member of the Butterfield Blues

Band before moving West and launching his solo career.

Included on That's My Partner! are Bishop chestnuts including

"Travelin' Shoes" and Smothers compositions such as "Annie Mae"

and "Pleading With You." ... Alligator also announced that it has

signed New Orleans blues pianist Marcia

Ball and plans to release an album by her early next

year. ...

Ani DiFranco,

Gillian Welch and

Suzzy Roche are only

a few of the female artists who have committed to a Red House

Records project called Driftless. The album, a tribute to folk

singer/songwriter Greg

Brown, will benefit breast cancer research. Also featured

on the disc will be Lucinda

Williams, Iris

Dement and three of Brown's daughters performing "Ella

Mae," a song about Brown's maternal grandmother. Although the

project is in its early stages, still more artists are expected to join. It's

due next year. ...

Laurie Lewis, the

Osborne Brothers and

the Seldom Scene are

confirmed acts at the Grand Ole Opry's Bluegrass Jamboree July

22–23. The festival, part of the Grand Ole Opry's two-month-

long 75th anniversary celebration, will feature arts and crafts and two

stages worth of performing bluegrass artists. ...

COLOR="#003163">Peter Mulvey's performance of

Acoustic Cafe, a nationally syndicated radio program, is scheduled

to air the week of July 24. Also scheduled to appear that week is

singer Terry Radigan.

For more information visit acafe.com. ...

— sonicnet.com staff report