The Steep Canyon Rangers will play their first 2008 hometown gig this Saturday in Asheville, NC.

RenoFest gets underway this weekend

Renofest 2008, will kick into high gear this Friday Afternoon, March 21 in Hartsville, SC, with a Bluegrass Band Contest at the Center Theater. The festival lineup includes Ronnie Reno & The Reno Tradition, Dailey & Vincent, The Grascal, Wayne Henderson and Friends and Movin’ On Bluegrass. The Festival wraps up on Sunday with a gospel show featuring the Flowers Family Band.

To get a taste of RenoFest make sure and watch the hour long “Bluegrass Express” episode filmed by SCETV at the 2007 RenoFest available on the home page of RenoFest

Steep Canyon Rangers playing first 2008 hometown gig

The Steep Canyon Rangers are gearing up for their first big hometown show of 2008 which takes place at The Orange Peel this Saturday March 22. The show starts at 9:00 PM (doors open at 8:00 PM) and will also feature Asheville’s Barrel House Mamas.

The Rangers will also be playing the “Bluegrass Returns to its Roots Festival” at the Exectutive Inn Rivermont in Owensboro, KY on April 11. Dailey & Vincent, The Steeldrivers, The Grascals, JD Crowe & The New South are among artists who will share the bill with the Steep Canyon Rangers.

Honi Deaton and Dream at Station Inn. 

Honi Deaton and Dream will be appearing at the Station Inn in Nashville, Tenn. tonight, March 20. They’ll take the stage around 9:00 PM and will be playing music off of their debut album “Chasin’ Dreams” on Lamon Records. For more information visit Honi Deaton or the Station Inn online. Cover is $10.00 at the door.

Share This

The Steep Canyon Rangers on stage at the Franklin KY Music Festival 2007 photo by Wendy Connor

The Steep Canyon Rangers will be performing a show at the world-famous Station Inn in Nashville, Tenn., on Thursday, Feb. 28th. The show starts at 9:00 PM with a $10 cover charge at the door. The Station Inn is located at 402 12th Ave. South in downtown Nashville. For more information you can visit the Steep Canyon Rangers online or The Station Inn.

The Steep Canyon Rangers have carved out a special spot in the world of bluegrass music, creating a sound that looks forward and backwards at the same time. First formed in the stairwells and kitchens of Chapel Hill, NC, the Rangers arrive from varied musical backgrounds. On stage and in the studio, the Steep Canyon Rangers have perfected their ensemble approach using fierce dynamics and seamless harmonies. The Rangers base their sound around a catalogue of original songs, drawing on the sounds of early bluegrass, honky tonk, and blues. In 2006 the International Bluegrass Music Association voted Steep Canyon Rangers the Emerging Artist of the Year. The past year also saw the title track “One Dime at a Time” rise to #1 on Bluegrass Unlimited’s National Bluegrass Survey.

Share This

2007 has been a great year for bluegrass music and a bunch of great discs were released. I’ve consumed more music since we launched BluegrassJournal.com six months ago than I have in the last 2 years. Of all the CDs I’ve listened to this year, there’s a handful that continually find there way back to the CD player.

For my number one pick, I’ve got to go with “Gaining Wisdom” from Donna Hughes, released on Rounder Records.

I can’t seem to get enough of this disc. Hughes is one of the truly gifted talents in the business. “Gaining Wisdom” showcases Hughes’ considerable songwriting abilities that relate everyday observations of life’s trials and tribulations from a unique viewpoint that most anyone can relate to their own life in one way or another.

Hughes’ song-writing skills have a unique and endearing quality about them. On the surface, they can seem deceptively simple and down to earth with a casual listen, yet upon closer inspection they reveal a highly sophisticated and thought provoking commentary on life itself, with an inate ability to command the listener’s undivided attention, drawing one to reflect on the many different joys, sorrows and challenges faced in life.

An album like “Gaining Wisdom,” I suspect, would come to be considered a “landmark” album for many artists in the midst of a long and successful careers. For Hughes, a relatively unknown, to debut with a collection of songs and performances this impressive… it leaves me highly anticipating her next release.

In the number two spot “Lovin’ Pretty Women” from The Steep Canyon Rangers on Rebel Records is just a great album. From the songwriting to performances, “Lovin’ Pretty Women” hits all the bases. The Rangers’ music is firmly planted on the traditional side of the genre but the band brings an energy and vibe to their traditional sound that borrows from the “Newgrass” fork of the musical tree.

Having seen these guys back in September at the Franklin, Ky., Festival, The Steep Canyon Rangers can blow the doors off the barn and leave crowds beggin’ for more. I suspect a ton of great things to come from The Steep Canyon Rangers in the years to come.

The group’s banjo picker, Graham Sharp, had a hand in writing eight of the 12 cuts on the project and may very well be the Steep Canyon Ranger’s ace in the hole.

To the uninitiated, a top to bottom listen will leave the listener wondering if Monroe or some other luminary of the genre originally released these songs years ago. Sharp has a real gift for penning tunes that sound like instant classics.

The instrumental work on the disc showcases a group of musicians who have honed their craft from years of playing together on the road

Much like my Dad, Dan Tackett I couldn’t nail down a single CD for 3rd place so I’m going to have a tie here as well. My picks for third include two artist that hadn’t released albums in several years.

And the tie comes down to Tom T. Hall’s “Tom T Hall Sings Miss Dixie and Tom T.” on Blue Circle Records and Charlie Sizemore’s “Good News” on Rounder Records.

Tom T. Hall is as deserving of the title “National Treasure” as any I’ve heard it bestowed upon. He has a unique perspective on life and can tell stories unlike anyone.

“Tom T. Hal Sings Miss Dixie and Tom T.” was originally intended as a Christmas present for Miss Dixie, Hall’s significant other and songwriting partner. Lucky for all of us, this wonderful album was released on the Hall’s own Blue Circle Records.

Tom T. and Miss Dixie have always written songs centered around observations of the common man’s life, and this batch of tunes deals with many of the same types of examinations that immortalized characters like Clayton Delaney, The Hitchhiker, and Ravishing Ruby.

Compared to the production of the country hits Hall had in the ’70s and ’80s, the laid-back and stripped-down instrumentation provided by an all-acoustic (and all-star) band place Tom T.’s strong suits as a songwriter and storyteller squarely at the forefront. Hall’s vocal delivery on the entire album is right on the money with an honesty you only get from an artist who penned the material.

“Good News” from Charlie Sizemore on Rounder Records showcases Sizemore’s unequaled vocal delivery on a great batch of songs. From the down and out “Blame it on Vern”, the lighthearted “Alison’s Band” and “I’ve Fallen And I Can’t Get Up” to the haunting civil war story “The Silver Bugle”, “Good News” is a great album and a long overdue return of one of Bluegrass’ great vocal stylists.

Back to the current tale, Sizemore himself may deserve the title of The Voice in today’s bluegrass scene. He plays his smooth voice on “Good News” every bit as well as his highly capable pickers do their instruments on this CD. He glides Teflon-like high and then dips low, all with plenty of emotion to fit the tune at hand.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from “Good News,” it’s this: Sizemore, Rounder Records and other powers that be shouldn’t wait another five years before doing this again. Doing so would be bad news.

Share This

Steep Canyon Rangers

Friday, December 7th

Steep Canyon Rangers - 7:30-8:00 & 11:00-11:30

Ricky Skaggs - 8:00-8:30 & 10:30-11:00

The Whites - 8:00-8:30 & 10:30-11:00

Bobby Osborne & The Rocky Top X-Press - 10:00-10:3

Saturday, December 8th

Ricky Skaggs - 7:00-8:00 & 10:00-10:30

The Whites - 7:00-8:00 & 10:00-10:30

Jesse McReynolds & The Virginia Boys - 8:00-8:30 & 10:30-11:00

Tuesday, December 11th

The Grascals - 7:30-8:00

The Whites - 8:00-8:30

The Grand Ole Opry is broadcast live on WSM 650 AM radio, online at www.WSMonline.com and on XM Satellite Radio (XM 11). All listed times are central time.

Share This

Steep Canyon Rangers L-R Charles Humphrey III, Mike Guggino, Woody Platt, Nicky Sanders and Graham Sharp

By Rickey Lamb and Dan Tackett

Once upon a time, this group of college buddies formed a little bluegrass band. Seven years later, the Steep Canyon Rangers are still buddies — and still performing their own signature style of bluegrass.

“We really try to keep things pretty traditional sounding,” Rangers mandolin player Mike Guggino said while hawking CDs after a recent performance at Uncle Pen Days in Bean Blossom, Ind.

The Uncle Pen Days crowd, like a lot of Bean Blossom festival crowds, leans pretty much to the traditional side of things. In that respect, the Rangers found themselves in friendly territory. But this band’s trick is putting a fresh sound on a big platter of original tunes that really come out sounding like … well, like they were from the Bluegrass Big Note Songbook your daddy used.

“We just try to be original. We try to have our own band,” Guggino said, giving lots of credit to banjo picker and bandmate Graham Sharp, who writes or co-writes songs for the Rangers.

The band began performing on the regional level around North Carolina when most of its members were in college in Chapel Hill, N.C. They’ve been touring on the national festival circuit for the past four years, about the same time fiddle whiz Nicky Sanders joined the band.

Steep Canyon Ranger’s Fiddle Player Nicky Sanders photo by Rickey Lamb

Sanders was not used to playing fiddle when he joined the band. While being classically trained on violin at Berklee school of music in Boston, his background was filled with the likes of Mozart and Bach. “It was a whole new learning experience to downplay the vibrato I had learned and work on the tone and technique of great fiddlers,” Sanders stated, “I wished I had started my fiddle playing years earlier.”

One of Sander’s inspiration, in the world of great fiddle, was the enormously talented, Vassar Clements. Sanders felt there was nobody that played quite like the late fiddler. “He had a unique sound and was extremely innovative,” Sanders acknowledged.

Sanders talked about how the older bluegrass bands wrote their own songs. Many of those songs have become standards in the bluegrass world. The Steep Canyon Rangers mentality is a return to writing and performing their own material, much like Bill Monroe, Jimmy Martin, and the rest of the classic Bluegrass people have done.

“Del McCoury and his band are a big inspiration to our sound,” Sanders touted prior to the evening show. It was quite evident by the way they worked the single mike, especially on an accapella gospel number, they did for the evening set.

The afternoon set the Rangers performed was a breath of fresh air, full of energy and definitely a fine performance. The evening show was filled with an even stronger sense of vitality. The songs off the new CD, Lovin’ Pretty Women, performed during both sets were very strong and had a great, characteristic sound.

The band’s latest CD is its third for Rebel Records. Produced by Ronnie Bowman, it’s been getting rave reviews as has the band itself with its high-energy shows.

Guggino said the group stays busy during the summer festival season, but tries to reach out to non-bluegrass crowds during the off season.

“We play a lot of clubs and theaters that aren’t used to getting a lot of bluegrass bands,” he said. “It’s a neat thing. We often bring bluegrass to people of all ages for the first time.”

Share This