Sam Bush will be featured in an upcoming segment of ABC's "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings." The segment will look at bluegrass music's influence on, and growing union with, the classical music scene. Also appearing on the program will be Jerry Douglas, Yo-Yo Ma and Mark O'Connor. The program will air at 6:30 p.m. EDT/PDT Friday (Aug. 25). ...

The long-awaited Stevie Ray Vaughan box set finally has a release date — Nov. 14. Originally scheduled for the 10th anniversary of his death, which is this month, the three-CD set will be 50 percent composed of previously unreleased material, a Sony executive said. The set will also contain a DVD with live tracks from Vaughan's performances on "Austin City Limits" in 1984 and 1989. ...

Johnny Bush, the man behind "Whiskey River," is ready to release Johnny Bush Sings Bob Wills next month on Lone Star Records. The disc's release was delayed for years when the masters were seized during an Internal Revenue Service raid of Willie Nelson's Pedernales Studios in 1990. An album of more original work, Lost Highway Saloon also is scheduled for release next month on Lone Star. ... Peter Case will produce a Mississippi John Hurt tribute album, which will be released early next year. Confirmed contributors are Lucinda Williams, Chris Smither and John Sebastian. ... Case also will participate in a Yahoo! chat ) at 5 p.m. PDT on Wednesday (Aug. 30). ... Steve Earle, Jackson Browne and John Prine will sing on Irish accordionist Sharon Shannon's September release The Diamond Mountain. The album will be different from her previous albums in that it will focus primarily on the vocal, rather than instrumental, aspects of the material. ...

Austin, Texas, is honoring country singer and author Kinky Friedman by declaring Sept. 8 Kinky Friedman Day. Mayor Kirk Watson will make the presentation either on the "Sammy and Bob Show," a local morning radio show, on Sept. 7 or during Friedman's performance at the Continental Club that same night. Friedman has earned the honor through years of community service, particularly his Adopt-a-Dog-athon. ... Crosby, Stills & Nash, Jimmy Buffett and Sheryl Crow are among the artists scheduled to perform at a fund-raiser Sept. 14 for the Democratic National Committee at New York City's Radio City Music Hall. Comedian John Leguizamo will serve as master of ceremonies. Presidential hopeful Al Gore and running mate Joseph Lieberman are scheduled to attend. ...

Rick Danko's last studio album, Times Like These (Breeze Hill Records) hit stores Tuesday (Aug. 22). The 10-track album contains eight studio tracks and two live songs and includes appearances by all recent members of The Band. The disc also includes a cover of the Grateful Dead's "Ripple" and songs Danko co-wrote with Bob Dylan ("This Wheel's On Fire") and Eric Clapton ("All Our Past Times"). The release of the album coincides with the reissue of the first four albums by The Band, Music From Big Pink, The Band, Stage Fright and Cahoots. Fans can also head over to Checkout.com where three bonus tracks from the re-released discs will be available to the public for the first time as downloads. The three are: "Up on Cripple Creek," "W.S. Walcott Medicine Show" and "Yazoo Street Scandal." ...

Emmylou Harris will appear on the self-titled album by Teddy Thompson due later this month. Thompson is the son of singer/songwriters Richard and Linda Thompson. ... Emmylou's father, Major Walter Rutland Harris, was honored by the Retired Officers Association this week with a scholarship named after him. The ceremony was held in Alexandria, Va., and was attended by the singer and her family. The scholarship will use private donations for no-interest college loans and grants for the children of officers and members of the armed services. ... Harris is also the subject of a profile in the August issue of Travel and Leisure. ...

Little Milton, Johnnie Johnson, Charlie Musselwhite, Duke Robillard, Joe Louis Walker and Trudy Lynn are hitting the road for four shows on the East Coast. From Nov. 8 to 12 the W.C. Handy All Star Tour, which showcases Handy Award winners and nominees, will visit New London, Conn., (Nov. 8), New York, (Nov. 9), Morristown, N.J., (Nov. 10) and Atlantic City, N.J., (Nov. 11). For more information head over to www.rosebudus.com. ... Los Lobos, Little Feat and Shawn Colvin will play the Fat Fry Music Festival in Santa Cruz, Calif.'s Aptos Village Park, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. ...

The Delta State University Alumni Foundation's third annual Peavine Awards ceremony, Sept. 7 in Cleveland, will benefit the Robert Johnson Memorial Fund and will celebrate major Mississippi Delta blues artists. The program will include tributes to Son House and Muddy Waters as well as a performance by Little Milton and film screenings. ... Joe Ely, Alvin Youngblood and Mary Gauthier are just a few of the more than a dozen performers at the Second Annual Thirsty Ear Festival in Santa Fe, N.M., Sept. 2–3. ...

Pete Seeger's prized banjo was returned Monday (Aug. 21) safe and sound. The instrument had been missing since Aug. 8, when the 81-year-old folk legend participated in a campaign event for presidential hopeful Ralph Nader. The Associated Press reported that Gary Schneeweiss Jr. found the banjo by the side of a road in Rosendale, N.Y., and contacted Seeger, whose phone number was on the banjo's case. Seeger's wife, Toshi, said that although the banjo had been thought stolen, it's possible her husband left it on top of his car and drove off, which would explain how it came to be found by the roadside. ...

Folkie and social activist Utah Phillips has been forced to cancel his appearance at the Philadelphia Folk Festival on Saturday (Aug. 26). On the advice of his doctor, Phillips withdrew from the festival because of a serious heart condition that will not allow him to make the trip. Songwriter and multi-instrumentalist John Hartford will perform in his place. For more information, check www.folkfest.org. ...

Willie Nelson has invited Al Gore, George W. Bush, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan to meet with farmers before the Farm Aid 2000 concert in Washington, D.C. Also invited to the Sept. 17 event, Billboard reported, are members of the House and Senate Agricultural Committee as well as members of the House and Senate Agricultural Appropriations Committee. No word on whether any of the camps have agreed to attend. ... R&B and blues pioneer singer Ruth Brown is getting ready to hit the road again after a stroke forced her to cancel several shows earlier this summer. Her next performance date is Oct. 27 at the San Francisco Jazz Festival, her management firm, Rosebud, reported. ...

Fleadh, the all-Irish music festival, has been canceled. After being postponed because of trouble finding sponsorship when its previous backer, Guinness, backed out, the projected six-city tour was scaled back to just two cities — New York and San Francisco — until finally being canceled altogether this week. ... The Squirrel Nut Zippers have announced their follow-up to 1998's Perennial Favorites, titled Bedlam Ballroom, which will be released Oct. 17 on Mammoth Records. The album, the band's fourth, will include 13 new tracks and enhanced CD content, which includes the band's award-winning video, "The Ghost of Stephen Foster." ...

Indigo Girls, Indigenous, Bonnie Raitt and Joan Baez will take part in the Honor the Earth Tour 2000. The tour, which began in 1993, raises money for American Indian groups to help them call attention to issues including the slaughter of buffalo and concerns about nuclear waste storage. These tours collectively have raised $465,000, which was distributed to 65 American Indian groups. This year's monthlong tour will kick off Sept. 30 in Billings, Mont., and close Oct. 4 in Missoula, Mont. ...

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is sponsoring "Got My Mojo Working: Muddy Waters and Modern Blues," as part of its American Music Masters series. The series will focus on Muddy Waters, inducted to the hall of fame in March. Waters is a key figure in the evolution of the blues, from its birthplace in the Mississippi Delta to one of its high-water eras, in Chicago in the '50s. The event will include a daylong conference Sept. 23 on Waters' legacy at Case Western Reserve University and two concerts Sept. 23 and 24. Other events include a symposium at CWRU, workshops for college and high-school students, and a blues film series. The series runs Sept. 18–24. ...

Robert Lockwood Jr. , Homesick James, Henry Townsend and Honeyboy Edwards will pay tribute to Delta blues legend Robert Johnson in two performances Sept. 23 at B.B. King's New York club. The group, which has been called the American blues equivalent of Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club, includes the only living contemporaries of the late bluesman. ...

Buddy and Julie Miller have been tapped to open for Emmylou Harris for the following dates: San Francisco (Sept. 26); Portland, Ore. (Sept. 28); Seattle (Sept. 29); and Vancouver, British Columbia (Sept. 30). Buddy Miller, alone, will then open some October shows for Harris, including: Denver (Oct. 3); Minneapolis (Oct. 5); Chicago (Oct. 6); Grand Rapids, Mich. (Oct. 7); and Columbus, Ohio (Oct. 11). ...

John Hiatt will release streaming video of a song he performed during a taping of PBS' "Austin City Limits." The song, from his Sept. 26 release Crossing Muddy Waters, will not be aired with the program in October. To watch the free video, head over to EMusic.com. ...

Jimmie Lee Robinson, 69, will participate in a "48 Hours Blues Vigil" in Chicago from 6 p.m. Aug. 25 to 6 p.m. Aug. 27 to protest the University of Chicago's plans to tear down the city's Maxwell Street area. Maxwell Street was known in recent decades for its open-air markets and as a haven and stamping ground for Chicago's burgeoning community of blues musicians. Carey Bell, Mike Bloomfield, Big John Wrencher and Johnny Young were all, at one time or another, familiar faces there. For more information about the issue, visit www.openair.org/maxwell/preserve.html. ...

— sonicnet.com staff report