![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/steep_canyon_rangers2.jpg\")
Photo by Sandlin Gaither<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cI would hesitate to call what we do bluegrass,\u201d says banjo player, singer and founding member Graham Sharp. \u201cFor me, bluegrass is just a little narrower than what we do.\u201d But he believes that the music made by Steep Canyon Rangers remains very much in line with the spirit of bluegrass. \u201cThe last [several] years have been great about bluegrass reaching outside the genre, pulling other songs in and making them its own,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
The manner in which bluegrass artists take songs from rock and pop and recast them in its own acoustic style is one of the genre\u2019s strengths. \u201cMy favorite bluegrass has been stuff that did sort of reach outside the genre,\u201d Sharp says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s kind of what we\u2019ve always done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the current lineup is very close to the original 2000 one\u2014currently it\u2019s Sharp plus guitarist Woody Platt, Mike Guggino on mandolin, fiddler Nicky Sanders, Barrett Smith on upright bass and percussionist Mike Ashworth\u2014time has seen some changes in the Steep Canyon Rangers\u2019 approach. \u201cWhen we first started, we were really focused on these 45-minute festival sets,\u201d Sharp recalls. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to go out there and know exactly where every song, every note, every joke is going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today the band is both tighter and looser. All of the musicians have further honed their skills, and benefit from the time spent together playing on the road. \u201cWe really try to kind of retain some of that structure to our show and have it thought out so it really flows well, but we also leave places in the show where you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen,\u201d Sharp says. \u201cWe leave a little bit more room to stretch out and make it unique and keep it interesting for us \u2026 and hopefully for people listening, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
That spontaneity has added even more spark and texture to an already energetic and animated set list. Sharp describes the feeling he gets playing onstage with the Rangers. \u201cYou\u2019re on the edge of the cliff, and you\u2019re going to fly or you\u2019re going to fall,\u201d he says. \u201cBut you\u2019re going to go<\/i>, one way or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
The band pays close attention to the kind of audiences it encounters. \u201cAt festivals, you\u2019re [sometimes] playing for crowds that aren\u2019t familiar with you, so you\u2019ve got to shoot toward the middle of your repertoire and just kind of try to eat the heart out of it that way,\u201d he says. When the band is topping the bill, it\u2019s different. \u201cYou have room to push the edges of your music, or pull out stuff that you haven\u2019t played in a little while.\u201d Sharp says that the band enjoys both kinds of gigs; plenty of both are on their 2019 schedule.<\/p>\n
The band\u2019s current schedule also features several dates that continue the band\u2019s successful run opening for the duo of Steve Martin and Martin Short. \u201cIt\u2019s so much fun to be out there and be a part of what those guys are doing, and to watch them work,\u201d says Sharp. To date the Steep Canyon Rangers have collaborated with Steve Martin on two studio albums (2011\u2019s Rare Bird Alert<\/i> and The Long-Awaited Album<\/i> from 2017) and a 2014 live recording.<\/p>\n
The Steep Canyon Rangers are currently touring in support of their most recent release, Out in the Open<\/i>; the record claimed the number one spot on the bluegrass charts, the band\u2019s sixth album to earn that top spot. But even longtime fans are likely to experience something new each time they see the group perform. \u201cOn my phone, I\u2019ve got set lists for all our shows, going back a number of years, for each venue,\u201d Sharp reveals. \u201cSo we\u2019ll look at the sets that we played the last two years there, and keep things changing and changing. That keeps it interesting for folks who come back and see us, year in, year out.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ask most people who follow Americana and related styles of music what it is that Steep Canyon Rangers plays, and the most common answer you\u2019ll hear is bluegrass. But ask […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,41],"tags":[3014],"class_list":["post-16300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americana","category-interview","tag-steep-canyon-rangers","cat-6-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16302,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16300\/revisions\/16302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}