George Bedard will play with Bill Kirchen and other top guitarists at The Ark.

Ann Arbor News file photo

Every year about this time, guitar-slinging pals George Bedard and Bill Kirchen get together for some sort of holiday-season homecoming show at The Ark. Last December, for example, the theme was “Honky-Tonk Holiday.”

In the late 1990s, the late Cub Koda was part of the festivities on a couple of occasions. So was Sarah Brown, the Ann Arbor native who is now an Austin-based singer, songwriter and bass player.

This year, Bedard and Kirchen have upped the axe-wielding ante again, by adding two more ace guitarists to the line-up — which this year is being billed as “An Electric Guitar Summit.”

Joining the fretboard fun on Saturday, Dec. 11 will be Colin Linden, a well-known guitarist in his native Canada, and Cindy Cashdollar, the all-world steel player who, for more than 25 years, has been creating alternately mournful, sublime, crying and snarling steel-guitar / Dobro sounds, both as a solo artist and during her stints with Asleep at the Wheel, Bob Dylan, Dave Alvin, Ryan Adams and many others.

They’ll be backed by Kirchen’s band — Jack O'Dell on drums and Maurice Cridlin on bass

Bedard, of course, is a supremely talented player and a longtime fixture on the Ann Arbor roots music scene — who’s been blowing the roof off of and gin joints and folk clubs all over the Detroit / Ann Arbor area for more than 30 years. For 25 of those years, he’s been backed by the Kingpins — which since 1989 has consisted of bassist Randall Tessier and drummer Richard Dishman. (Tessier joined in '89.)

And Kirchen is the Ann Arbor native and co-founder of Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen, who’s been a solo act for many years now — and who, like Bedard, is known for his eclectic mix of country, blues, swing, rockabilly and surf-rock.

“I would say I come more from the blues end of things, and Bill is more country,” says Bedard. “But there is a huge body of interest that we have in common — we’ve definitely learned from a lot of the same great guiarists.”

In fact, Bedard has recently been immersing himself in the work of several of those great players. He’s currently working on an album of all instrumentals — classic songs that he’s learned over the years from such guitar masters as Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Magic Sam, Gatemouth Brown, Thumbs Carlisle, Billy Butler and others. Some of the songs swing like crazy, some are revved-up blues-rockers and some are delivered with a muted, deft subtlety. Throughout, Bedard’s prodigious guitar chops are impressive, as always.

And some of the tunes are nimble, tasteful guitar adaptations of songs where, on the original versions, the melody was carried by different instruments, like Junior Walker’s “Cleo’s Mood” (saxophone) and Floyd Cramer’s “Last Date” (piano). He also does “Nut Rocker,” which many rock fans remember from Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s hyperactive, showboating, early ‘70s version, but which was originally done in the early ‘60s by B. Bumble and the Stingers — and which itself was a rocked-up adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite.”

He even delivers a fittingly languid and atmospheric interpretation of the theme from “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.”

“I’ve always loved instrumentals, and I’ve been wanting to do an instrumental album for a long time, but mostly this was me saying ‘I’ve always meant to learn this song, and I’m now going on 60, so if I’m gonna learn these, this would probably be a good time,” says Bedard.

One of the tracks is Magic Sam’s “Lookin’ Good.” “I saw Sam play that at the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Fest, and there’s a live recording of that performance,” recalls Bedard. “And Charlie Christian’s ‘Topsy / Swing to Bop’ is one that I’ve been wanting to learn since I was in my 20s.”

Bedard has always incorporated jazz phrasing and a decided swing element into his playing, but this record — which is still untitled, and which will be released by next summer — draws on his jazz influences more than any of his previous releases.

“Yeah, lately, I really have been getting more into jazz guitar. With the Kingpins, we do more of a rock ‘n’ roll thing, but I’ve always loved swing, and when I went back to learn a lot of these jazz tunes I loved, they were all from the late ‘30s and early ‘40s, which was a great era for swing music, obviously.”

And, clearly, there is a connection between swing and rockabilly, which is one of the genres Bedard and the Kingpins are most famous for: “Yeah, a lot of the early rockabilly guys started out listening to Les Paul and the swing groups, and for a lot of them, the swing influence came via the jump blues and R&B side of things.”

On the upcoming disc, Kingpins drummer Dishman plays on all but two of the tracks, and bassist Tessier plays on a few. But for many of the tunes, Bedard wanted a stand-up bass, so for those he tapped either Carl Hildebrandt, who played bass in Bedard’s ‘70s-era band, the Silvertones, or Pat Prouty, formerly of Al Hill’s band.

The disc also features a re-recording of a song, “Lockwood Jump,” that was composed by Bedard and Steve Nardella, and recorded by the Silvertones in the ‘70s. Another highlight is Bedard playing solo acoustic guitar on “Waterborough Rag,” an intricate finger-picking rag-tune that he composed. “I would say my biggest inspiration there was Blind Blake,” says Bedard.

Bedard has never been one to do a lot of traveling to do his gigs, primarily because he has two children, who are now aged 16 and 19. So he mostly plays in Michigan. But last September, he had an opportunity to play at the Barcelona Blues Festival. “I was only there for four days, but it was a terrific festival, I sold a bunch of our CDs, had a blast playing, and hopefully added some new fans over there. It was really a great experience.”

Kevin Ransom, a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com, first interviewed George Bedard, for The Detroit News, in 1991. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.