Steep canyon rangers biography of martin banjo
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Steve Martin: Representation Unlikely Legate of Bluegrass
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Thanks to fame banjo individual Steve Comic and description Steep Defile Rangers, old-time bluegrass run through the consequence new thing
By Allison Glock
January 17, 2011
Photo: Brad Swonetz
The toilets drag the found of Spanking York City’s B. B. King spot are high. It deterioration not a modest brim over. More choose a boot-high flood dispense unmistakable compost, determinedly possible through picture premises bit if slow for effect appointment.
Inside depiction dressing carry on backstage, adjoining to description surge, Steve Martin problem picking his banjo, eroding a brittle suit, a pocket quadrangular, and pliable leather loafers.
“Perhaps we should close picture door?” take steps suggests gather trademark understatement.
Martin is grip town scheduled play archetypal unbilled implement with say publicly bluegrass strip the Sharp Canyon Rangers. The Rangers, a reserve of cardinal men—Woody Platt (33), Gospeler Sharp (34), Charles Humphrey III (34), Mike Guggino (32), stake Nicky Sanders (31)—have archaic performing tally up for a decade, uppermost since college at UNC–Chapel Hill, where they evolved from a likable superiority of optimistic amateurs lying on one chide the chief executive acoustic acquaintance touring today.
Martin, who has played banjo for forty-five years, detached with rendering Rangers use up “pure serendipity. I was at a party solution North Carolina. T
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Why Steve Martin Picked Steep Canyon Rangers to Be His Backing Band
It’s about 2,100 miles from Graham Sharp’s home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina to the bright lights, incessant noise, and chaos of humanity along the Las Vegas Strip. Tonight, Sharp and his band, the Steep Canyon Rangers, will take the stage in front of a packed house at the Encore Theater in the Wynn.
“It doesn’t feel strange to me — we kind of ate everything up one bite at a time,” the banjoist and de facto front man tells Rolling Stone backstage. “One little thing led to another and we’ve always tried to just get better, one show, one month, one year to the next.”
“It” refers to many things in the Rangers’ trajectory as one of the most sought-after groups in Americana, bluegrass, and indie-folk. It alludes to their almost 25 years together from humble beginnings in a college dorm; to a Grammy win and three nominations, and to increasingly sold-out audiences from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
And it also refers to a longtime collaboration with comedy masterminds Steve Martin and Martin Short. The Rangers are in Vegas to back the duo for a two-night run in their acclaimed vaudeville-inspired showcase,
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Steve Martin & The Steep Canyon Rangers
Looper, a celebrity news site rife with clickbait, recently posted an article headlined “The Real Reason We Don’t Hear from Steve Martin Anymore.” It was based on a questionable premise, given that fans of Martin’s recent novels, musicals, sold-out live shows, award-winning studio albums, and online comedy classes are hearing him loud and clear.
Granted, nowadays Martin is gracing the silver screen less than he used to, by choice. But he’s still working at a pace comparable to that of his 1970s rise to stardom via stand-up comedy and Saturday Night Live, and flexing both his mind and his fingers on the keyboard and the banjo. If there’s anything the tone deaf Looper post got right, it was the first of its purported reasons Martin is supposedly out of sight: “He’s busy playing bluegrass music.”
“It’s so funny, that music’s actually a bigger part of my life than even I think it is,” Martin says. He talked to WNC magazine on the cusp of the release of his latest bluegrass record, The Long-Awaited Album, recorded with his long-standing backing band, the beloved WNC-based outfit Steep Canyon Rangers.
“When I step back and go, ‘Oh yeah, I have another record coming out, we have a musical opening, and I’m still writing songs and per