In addition to the tour, Hunter’s electronica side project, Garage-A-Trois, performs at B.B. King’s Blues Club in New York on September 16.

Special to this outing are some multi-night gigs in Austin and New York. At the end of the tour, the band has a six-night run at Yoshi’s in Oakland, Calif.

Hunter’s eighth album, Songs From the Analog Playground, will be released September 25. It’s his first featuring vocals. The artists lending their voices to the record are singers Kurt Elling, Norah Jones, and Theryl de Clouet, and rapper Mos Def.

Of his decision to include vocalists on the album, Hunter says, “That’s the kind of music I was brought up on. As a street musician, that’s all you played because if you played instrumental music, you really went broke.”

Armed with his own specially designed eight-string bass/guitar combination, Hunter has carved a niche for himself in modern jazz. While quick to tip his hat to the greats who have gone before, Hunter integrates classic jazz stylings with fusion, funk, blues, and rock, producing a style he cheekily refers to as “antacid jazz.”

Keller Williams, who joins Hunter for gigs running October 9 – 20, is a celebrated 12-string guitarist in his own right. Williams has toured extensively with The String Cheese Incident, performed along with Ani DiFranco, David Grisman, and Bela Fleck, and logs more than 200 shows each year.

Before hooking up with Hunter, Williams will be on the Ratdog headlined So Many Roads tour through September 3.