'World's Largest Co-Write'

"I like playing on stage and performing," Bryan Hembree says. "But I wouldn't be a musician if I was in a cover band. Half of my love for playing music out (in public) is testing new songs."

And what's better than a new song? Co-writing one with several dozen -- or more -- of his closest friends.

Hembree and his wife, Bernice, will host an "interactive concert" Wednesday at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art with the idea they'll not only play music but write some with the audience. Better known as 3 Penny Acre, the Hembrees are performing as a duo this year while colleague Bayard Blain takes time off to make guitars.

"We'd been touring hard as 3 Penny Acre the last six or seven years," Hembree says, "and Bayard started dreaming about taking more time for his luthier work. We said go for it.

"Then Bernice and I realized we'd been playing together for 12 years but never as just the two of us."

They didn't want to call themselves 3 Penny Acre for obvious reasons, so the Hembrees came up with the name Smokey & the Mirror. Together with various friends who sit in from time to time, the duo has just released a live album recorded last November in Houston, Austin and Oklahoma City.

The idea of songwriting with an audience was born out of a songwriters' retreat in the desert of West Texas.

"Almost anyone can do it," Hembree says of songwriting. "Anything can be a good song. You just have to formulate an idea and create the imagery.

In the past, Hembree has had as many as 30 people working on one concept or one song idea in a workshop, "then I kind of formulate it into an actual song." The event at Crystal Bridges Museum might just be the "world's largest co-write," he says. "To bring that many people together to collaborate is my goal."

-- Becca Martin-Brown

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