Eclectic Company: Gotta Be Pickin’ Something: Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers

When I quit writing about and presenting music to go to law school, I was gifted with some of the most godawful lawyer jokes you never want to hear, always starting with the “professional courtesy” variety (that’s the answer, of course, to “Why doesn’t a lawyer who falls overboard get eaten by sharks?”) and ending with “How can you tell the difference between lawyer roadkill and weasel roadkill? The skidmarks come before the weasel.”

Well, before I heard one particular member of the vast repertoire of popular jokes applied to lawyers, I heard it applied to an awkward-looking instrument described dismissively in Joel Oliansky’s Shame, Shame On The Johnson Boys, a hilarious novel about the folk scene of the early 1960s, as “a drum with strings.” Some pundits, like my friend Nancy Groce, the folklorist and ethnomusicologist for the Library of Congress and author of The Musician’s Joke Book: Knowing The Score, quote the joke, telling readers that “20,000 banjos under the sea is . . . a good start.” Others, like banjoist /actor/writer/comedian Steve Martin, think 20,000 banjos issued to babies at birth is . . . a good start.

Martin will be making his case for banjo love to the good people of the Lake Area next week, when he and his cohorts the Steep Canyon Rangers — an exemplary band of young Asheville, North Carolina bluegrassers who were last heard locally during Ponyfest 2008 — grace Bulber’s stage to benefit the Coastal Plain Conservancy, a regional non-profit land trust headed up by Chad Thielen. Tickets for the April 28 show are available from the Conservancy. www.cpc-la.org.

Martin will be performing tunes from his no-lick-wasted debut banjo record, The Crow, released in 2009 on Rounder Records, and available from www.stevemartin.com. The Crow is the culmination of 45 years of Martin’s fingerpicking, drop-thumb frailing and songwriting in a mixed bag of traditional and modern styles. Fifteen tracks on The Crow are Steve Martin originals, showcasing his deft and charming banjo playing, and proving he’s as stylish writing song lyrics as he is New Yorker short stories. On record, Martin’s reedy and identifiable vocals work for “Late for School,” a comic song that runs along like a kid pelting toward the schoolhouse door, but as he himself admits, Martin was lucky to have Tim O’Brien’s smoother pipes for the album’s opener, “Daddy Played the Banjo,” co-written with Garry Scruggs (and to have Bluegrass Patriarch Earl Scruggs picking on the tune).

Although many songs on The Crow sound familiar, only one track is traditional: That’s a medley of frailed old-timey, folk and bluegrass tunes including “Sally Ann,” Simple Gifts,” “Loch Lomond,” and, of all things, “Shame, Shame On The Johnson Boys,” that Martin put together many years ago to practice on. All the tunes on The Crow are played with delicacy and joyful restraint, which shows just how talented Martin is as a banjo player. Even when he’s in full cry picking away, there’s barely a hint of that warp-speed pyrotechnical hammering that makes a small amount of bluegrass a surfeit for many listeners. Instead, what you get from Martin is an overview of the rich and varied aural coloration of the banjo. And that’s a suprising and welcome treat.

The Steep Canyon Rangers who’re backing Martin’s playing, performing some dual-banjo arrangements, among others, will also be showcasing their own work from Deep In The Shade, their 2009 Rebel Records release. One standout moment in each of the shows they performed when they first toured with Martin in 2009 was a five-part harmony a capella number from their own repertoire, and a similar number will feature in their Lake Charles performance. Shout out for their version of “(Bring Me Little Water) Sylvie,” a Leadbelly song reformatted by the Rangers for Deep In The Shade. It’s a revelation.

Having circled around from trad to modern and back again, the Rangers are unique in that they’re admired in bluegrass circles, but are also well-known on the rock and roll jam-band circuit. “You know, out West, we’re the most traditional act on the bill,” guitarist Woody Platt laughed, when we spoke by phone a few weeks ago. “But in the East, we probably wouldn’t be called traditional” he told me. I’ll call it tradition-steeped and contemporary-styled; a balance of old-sounding new songs and new-sounding old songs that makes Martin and the Rangers such a perfect fit.

The first time the Rangers hooked up with Martin through family connections in North Carolina, they thought they were in for a lazy jam, but quickly learned to respect Martin’s absorbed playing. “He’s a great musician,” Platt assured me. “He’s not just riding on his name or his fame from other careers.” The Rangers recently spent a week with Martin rehearsing for this tour, and Platt told me they feel no differently about Martin now that they’ve toured with him. “He is absolutely a dedicated player,” Platt told me. “He has a banjo in every room of his house, and we played music all the time we were there [rehearsing], unless we were eating or sleeping.”

Martin returns the favorable review in his admiring intro to Deep In The Shade, noting that he’s been fortunate to be able to play with the Rangers. In addition to Platt on guitar and lead vocals, the Rangers include Graham Sharp, their banjo player and primary songwriter. Sharp’s learned to play harmony banjo behind Martin when they tour together, but his range and importance to the overall sound of the Rangers own work is legion. Every time I picked up the CD to check on whose song had been tickling my ears, it turned out to be one of Sharp’s. He has some true hits on Deep In The Shade, including “Have Mercy,” wherein our hero begs his girl on the side to kiss him goodbye ‘cause he’s too weak to say no! and “Nowhere To Lay Low,” a minor-key bluegrass number recorded with tasty mandolin runs from Sharp’s bandmate Mike Guggino on the track. Two more top drawer songs – the instrumental “Mourning Dove,” written by fiddler Nicholas Sanders, with the haunting bird’s call scraped by the solo fiddle, and “There Ain’t No Easy Street (On My Side of Town)” co-written by bassplayer Charles R. Humphrey III – are also sure to be covered sometime soon. Get their music at www.steepcanyon.com.