OK, guitar freaks, hang on to your hats. Junior Brown says that he, James Burton and Albert Lee — three of the hottest, most innovative roots-rock / country-rock pickers of the last 50 years — have completed a trio album that is now “just waiting to be mixed.”

Can’t wait for that one! That super-guitar-trio is a murderer’s row of barn-burning six-stringers.

Burton was the seminal, pioneering guitarist who blazed new trails in the 1950s as the guitarist in Ricky Nelson’s band, honing the speedy country-guitar style he dubbed “chicken-pickin’” — and later serving as Elvis Presley’s influential right-hand-guitar-man. Lee, meanwhile, as a coveted session player and sideman for the likes of Emmylou Harris, the Everly Brothers and Eric Clapton, took the chicken-pickin’ style to new heights with his jaw-dropping, bionic-fingered solos.

And Junior Brown, of course, is the versatile virtuoso who is also the master of the guit-steel, a hot-rodded axe of his own design — a double-necked creature that’s a hybrid of the standard six-string electric guitar and the steel guitar.

Armed with this unique instrument, Brown first caused a stir in the ‘90s, combining various styles, like growling rockabilly, gutbucket honky-tonk, steamy blues, Western swing and nimble jazz progressions. Not to mention the norteno music and reverb-soaked surf-guitar excursions that are also part of his arsenal.

“It was a fun record to make,” says Brown, who comes to The Ark with his own band on Sunday. “We all have a lot of respect for each other. James had been talking about us doing something together for a while, but it’s so hard to get everyone’s schedule together, because Albert is always touring in Europe with his band, and James just seems to have all these projects going at once. I don’t know where he gets the energy.”

But even though all three are virtuoso pickers, the disc isn’t a riff-o-rama, says Brown. “No, me and Albert do some singing — I do some of my tunes, and he does some of his. James declined to sing, but his playing is definitely all over the record. But it’s not just about jamming.”

Recently, Brown’s own live show has morphed somewhat. About six months ago, his wife rejoined the band, after an eight-year absence, so she and Brown are again singing a lot of duets, just like they did in the group’s early days.

“I’ve been writing some more of those kinds of songs, those husband-and-wife songs, which is a different kind of writing,” says Brown during an interview from his home in Austin. “When you’re writing songs like that, you’re creating a dialogue between the two singers, instead of singing to the audience.

“And, if you’re writing songs to sing with your wife, they’re going to be more intimate. You’re not going to be writing songs about hopping in the pick up truck and getting drunk,” he adds with a laugh. “But we’re also doing some uptempo stuff. Those bluegrass-style uptempo songs are good for male/female duets.”

Brown has more news to report. As if creating the guit-steel Frankenstein wasn’t enough of an innovation, he has recently brought to life an even more complicated hybrid — a pedal guit-steel. “It’s much more of a contraption than the guit-steel,” cracks Brown.

“It’s a pedal steel guitar, with 10 strings, and the guitar rises up out of it, on hinges.”

So, what inspired this latest innovation?

“Well, the whole idea of the first guit-steel is that it was just faster for me to be able to switch from the regular electric guitar to the steel guitar while I was singing, if I wanted a different kind of guitar texture,” explains Brown. “And this new one accomplishes the same thing — I can just switch quickly between the electric guitar and pedal steel, or vice versa, while I’m singing.”

It’s been five years since Brown’s last album, “Live at the Continental Club” — the Austin club where he first made a name for himself and still tries to maintain his weekly Sunday-night residency if at all possible.

“I still keep a pretty busy touring schedule, but I really do like to keep that Sunday night date at the Continental, just because it’s where I got my start, and it’s such a great tradition.”

Brown says that his new duet songs with his wife will “eventually” it onto an album, “but I’m not one of those people who likes to crank out an album every year — I don’t like to run into the studio and do something half-baked, jut for the same of making a record. The albums I’ve made in the past - I’m very proud of those, I think they’re high-quality records, and really well-made, and I want the next one to have that same high quality as well.”

Brown has often said in the past that “people who don’t like country music always tell me they like my music.”

That’s because when most folks today think of country music, they think of the glossy, pre-fab, cookie-cutter “product” that has sadly taken over country radio for the last 20 years. “That’s not real country music,” says Brown, who thinks that contempo-country-pop music “has lost the connection that classic country music had with intimacy, and real sentiments, and humility, and genuine emotion.

The shiny dross that has been cranked out by the Nashville-major-label assembly line for the last 20 years “has no humility in it,” muses Brown. “It’s all arrogance — even the ballads. Go back and listen to Lefty Frizzell and George Jones — there was no arrogance in that music — they were pouring their hearts out, and being humble.”

One reason Brown is not so concerned with going five years between records is that, in the roots-music world, most artists make much more of their living from live performing than from record sales.

“But I also like to keep doing live shows because, if you’re a musician, it’s sort of like being an athlete. You’ve got to keep those muscles moving, and limber. Before, if I would take a week off from playing, man, I could really feel it in my fingers when I picked up the guitar again. So now I play all the time, and that’s why I think I play better now than I ever did.

“I just love to play, and I plan to stick with it until they haul me off the stage.”

Kevin Ransom is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.