Sam Bush, Vince Gill, Dan Crary, Curtis Burch and other former members of the New Grass Revival and The Bluegrass Alliance – two of Bluegrass music’s most influential bands – participated in the successful launch of a major film and recording project at the 2008 International Bluegrass Music Association convention in Nashville, Tenn., last month.

The project, The Bluegrass Hotel, is based on an old Victorian mansion in Louisville, Ky., that was a key component of the bluegrass scene and the residence of major music artists during the Newgrass era of the 1970s.

An all-out effort — including fundraising — is under way to put the finishing touches on a video documentary entitled “The Life and Music of John Hartford.”

It’s being undertaken by two media professionals who are also musicians and self-professed admirers of the late Hartford, best known to the generic music world as writer of the Glen Campbell classic, “Gentle on My Mind,” a song that barely scratched the surface of Hartford’s unique view of the world and life.