By Pete Wernick

Starting in early 2009, the bluegrass community has a prominent new face: One of the most famous, successful, and versatile figures in American entertainment has gone public with his lifelong five-string banjo obsession, producing the “world’s most expensive banjo record” and supporting it with a dizzying string of TV appearances including Late Show With David Letterman, Saturday Night Live, American Idol, and a cluster of high-visibility talk shows (the Ellen DeGeneres Show, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, Tavis Smiley, The Colbert Report, and more). Never before on the planet has a banjo been seen and heard by so many people in such a concentrated period of time.

The album, “The Crow,” now on Rounder Records, features 14 of Steve’s original compositions, both instrumental and vocal, plus a medley of traditional tunes performed clawhammer-style. Supported by an all-star cast coordinated by producer John McEuen with assistance from Tony Trischka and Pete Wernick, the album hit the top of Billboard magazine’s Bluegrass Chart in February and has remained there most of the year. This summer, Rounder released a “deluxe” popup packaging version with extra tracks, and to further promote the music, Martin is about to undertake his first personal appearance tour in three decades backed by the Steep Canyon Rangers.

How does Steve Martin want to be known to the bluegrass community? “As a musician who writes good tunes and presents them in an appealing way.”

Since beginning to play the banjo at age 17 in 1962 in southern California, the instrument has been a mostly private, after-hours pursuit. With late-night banjo in the house not allowed, Steve would practice in his ’57 Chevy “with the windows rolled up, which made it pretty hot in the summer.”

What was his inspiration? At first, the banjo styles from those “folk boom” years played by the Kingston Trio’s Dave Guard, and from artists—including Billy Faier, Jim McGuinn (later known as Roger McGuinn of the Byrds), Dick Weissman, Dick Rosmini, and others—on a sampler record of folk banjo styles. The magic of Earl Scruggs was in the air and soon took hold. A few pickers in southern California could be heard at parties and on stage, and Steve even took a lesson from one and learned two banjo rolls. The Pete Seeger instruction book helped unlock the basics of frailing and three-finger picking. His high school buddy John McEuen (later of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) was on a similar banjo quest at the time, and Steve eagerly learned whatever John could show him. Occasional chances to hear David Lindley in the Mad Mountain Ramblers, and especially Doug Dillard with the Dillards at The Paradox club in Tustin, Cal., provided “lightning flash inspirational moments,” according to Steve.

Mesmerized by the fast, clear picking, Steve added banjo tunes to his repertoire of magic skills he was cultivating at daily shows in the Magic Shop at nearby Disneyland.“I found a similarity between the tactile skills necessary for magic and for the banjo. There’s a physical pleasure of moving your fingers precisely and exactly. That’s what I did when I was learning magic—it’s all about your fingers and your fingertips.”

As the banjo tunes started to sound good, he worked them into his act. At Birdcage Theater in California, he would dress in period costume and sing and play “Good Old Mountain Dew.” Over the next decade, as he toured the country doing standup comedy, climbing the show-business ladder, the banjo kept its place in his act. As detailed in his recent bestselling memoir of those days, Born Standing Up, he concocted an outrageous brand of comedy that finally broke through in the mid-’70s on television and at major venues nationwide. The banjo’s function was part “prop”—one of a series of incongruous elements including fake noses, balloons, and his trademark arrow-through-the-head.

On occasion, Martin would break into a Scruggs-style hot lick rendition of “Shuckin’ The Corn” while smugly uttering, “Heyyy, this guy’s…good!” and then quickly put the instrument aside to launch into a crowd-pleasing routine such as “Happy Feet” or “Fun Balloon Animals.” Other times, he’d explain how it’s impossible to play sad music on the banjo, singing “…death, misery, destruction…” with a big grin and spirited accompaniment.

Three decades later, Steve’s public image and his treatment of the banjo create a strikingly different mood. The humor is gentler and kinder, and the banjo and the music are given sincere respect and plenty of time to weave their spell. While still lean and agile, the white-haired Martin often wears glasses and speaks with quiet enthusiasm about his 1927 Florentine Gibson and the players who have influenced him. On the TV talk show couch, he reaches for the instrument, and his sudden transformation from familiar comedic figure to instrumental master spellbinds his host. The typical questions start flowing, and the host and audience learn that the banjo has African origins, and that Scruggs-style uses three-finger picks, while clawhammer is played barehanded with the fingernail. A short minute of tuneful, lively playing seems to practically spin the host out of his or her seat. This is not a “renowned professional musician” but more like a familiar friend with a magnificent skill, getting more elated reaction than musicians normally ever receive. With admiring excitement the host asks more questions, especially about the new record.

The above scenario has never before been done as frequently and successfully as Steve Martin now does regularly. It’s an opportunity not commonly available to other highly-skilled players in the bluegrass community. Martin has earned access to these huge audiences through decades of hard-won expertise on stages, in front of TV cameras, and on movie sets. As a personality familiar to almost everyone in America, when he does something new and interesting, people pay attention.

General awareness of bluegrass music is still at a relatively young stage. Even media giants entrusted to report wars, financial crises, and elections stumble and bumble over simple bluegrass truths. No less an authority than the New York Times captioned a large photo: “Steve Martin is considered a master of the difficult clawhammer five-fingered playing style.” The Huffington Post revealed in a concert review that Steve “…crushed any doubt about his chops with ‘Clawhammer Melody’ [instead of ‘Clawhammer Medley’], a mash-up of standards on which he showed off the unusual style of clawhammering or frailing. Instead of being pulled by three fingers, like the way Earl Scruggs does it, Martin depresses the banjos’s [sic] strings with five fingers—a particularly challenging technique, but one at which he’s considered a master.” Eager to hear Steve’s spin on this whirlwind of misinformation, I asked him a few questions:

PW: You’ve got to show me this unusual five-finger-style referenced by the New York Times. Note the report seems to imply that you’re playing more than one banjo, as well, which must be especially hard.

Yes, that five-finger technique, of which I am a master, is very difficult. The hard part is getting the pinky to hit the fourth string…I can’t stand it that they don’t say I’m a master of the difficult four-finger, three-finger style.

PW: How will you explain to the clawhammer players that contrary to common fallacy, the player must depress the strings of more than one banjo?

Most clawhammer players don’t know that. And that’s what makes me different.

PW: Anything about how to get the strings depressed, but not so depressed they don’t want to play?

The secret is to depress the strings without abusing them.

Martin’s humor is never far from the surface in his performances, but as pickers well know, the required concentration is no laughing matter and, in fact, Martin’s musical taste includes a reverence for the soulful and melodic possibilities of the banjo. Notwithstanding his oft-quoted “you can’t play sad music on a banjo,” he’s made a point to learn arrangements of lyrical and even melancholy tunes, such as Tony Ellis’s “Father’s Pride,” Tom Adams’, “Box Elder Beetles,” or this author’s version of “Down In The Valley To Pray.” According to Steve, “There’s a lot of drama in banjo music. There’s speed and excitement, but there’s also this melancholy, a lonesomeness. It’s almost like looking at an Edward Hopper painting. You get a very clear picture of solitude when it’s played a certain way.”

The material on “The Crow” includes several tunes written in the ’60s and ’70s when Steve was working as a comedy writer for the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour and Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour show on CBS and traveling the country as a standup performer. The banjo was a solo pursuit, and the tunes would come out as free-flowing expression, not designed for ensemble playing or even formal performance. The tune “Saga Of The Old West” features unusual scales inspired by the sounds of popular sitar master Ravi Shankar. “Banana Banjo,” a pastiche of zany licks, embodies the idea of “going bananas on the banjo.”

During the recording in Nashville of the classic 1972 Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album “Will The Circle Be Unbroken,” Steve’s manager Bill McEuen (John McEuen’s brother) arranged for Steve and some of the session crew, including fiddler Vassar Clements and bassman Junior Huskey, to use the studio during off hours to record Steve’s tunes. Several years later (in the wake of his major hit comedy albums “Let’s Get Small” and “A Wild And Crazy Guy”), Steve was down to only a half-album’s worth of new comedy material, so the banjo cuts surfaced as one side of the Warner Brothers LP, “The Steve Martin Brothers.” While the music and the record didn’t achieve the smash success of his earlier albums, they did create ripples still felt today. Contemporary banjo ace and deejay for Sirius radio’s bluegrass channel, Ned Luberecki is among many whose earliest inspiration to take up the instrument came from Steve’s picking on that record.

The banjo’s role in Steve’s life waned as he quietly ended his career as a standup comedian and entered the less taxing and more agreeable world of moviemaking. Dozens of hit movies ensued, beginning with The Jerk (which includes a bit of Steve’s singing and ukulele playing). The banjo would sometimes come along for companionship in the on-set trailer where the star would often have time on his hands awaiting his call. With the advent of the Internet, Steve would occasionally search the word “banjo” online for music to listen to and sometimes tablatures to learn from. “Nola,” a highly-complicated piano piece that was a favorite of his mother’s, was his obsession for a long period. Steve explains, “I could never get all the parts down at the same time.”

While never having the occasion to attend a bluegrass festival, Steve enlarged his musical world with recordings by such favorites as Tony Ellis, Tom Adams, and Bill Keith. Listening to bluegrass channels on satellite radio, the music of Bill Monroe, Hot Rize, and many others filtered in. By remarkable coincidence, a fellow screenwriter neighbor in Steve’s building in New York is Marshall Brickman, the same person who forty years earlier played in the folk group the Tarriers and (along with Eric Weissberg) recorded one of Steve’s earliest favorite albums, “New Dimensions In Banjo And Bluegrass.”

In 2001, Steve was asked to play on an all-star version of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” for the album “Earl Scruggs And Friends.” He recorded his part to the track with Earl and Louise present and with Randy Scruggs in the producer’s role. The cut and music video (with Steve’s part edited in) received wide airplay and also featured guitar hero Albert Lee, Vince Gill, Leon Russell, and pianist/bandleader Paul Shaffer. The musical tour de force won that year’s Grammy award for Best Country Instrumental Performance. Martin is both proud and a bit sheepish about his Grammy, which he says he makes a point to display any time a musician comes to visit.

Banjo Newsletter’s February 2003 cover story on this most famous, but rarely heard, banjo player led to further expansion of his music circle. Talking with interviewer Ira Gitlin, he began to mention some of his favorite players. This author enjoyed a pleasant surprise to read “Hot Rize’s banjo player” was one of them,  and became determined to try to get together with the star. I asked mutual friend John McEuen to facilitate a meeting and began a friendship with Martin that led to several collaborations.

Though inexperienced at jamming, Steve has enjoyed get-togethers with Hollywood friends who are into bluegrass and acoustic music. Director Christopher Guest (This is Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind, etc.), Martin Mull, Tom Hanks, Kevin Nealon, Eugene Levy, and Monty Python’s Eric Idle are among his music buddies.

Martin’s first step forward as a serious performing banjo player was a bold one. He brought together Scruggs, myself, Ellis, and Charles Wood for a banjo evening at the New Yorker Festival, presented by The New Yorker magazine at a Manhattan theater in September 2005. To plug the festival, the group was asked to perform on the Late Show With David Letterman, and worldwide late-night viewers were treated to “Men With Banjos Who Know How To Use Them” trading breaks on “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Next came a request from Tony Trischka to record two numbers for his Rounder album “Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular,” additional TV performances, and a rare appearance on Bluegrass Unlimited’s song chart of an instrumental (a twin-banjo version of Steve’s original “The Crow”).

Martin contacted me in 2007 to provide music for his wedding that summer at his Beverly Hills home. Given his choice of what musicians to ask, Steve picked Hot Rize. The band played Tim O’Brien’s “Romance Is A Slow Dance” for the ceremony at the couple’s request and Steve presented the group to deliver a short set of band favorites at the celebration.

With this swell of music activity, Steve’s banjo muse also went into higher gear. The instrumental “Tin Roof,” written on the set of the movie Cheaper By The Dozen II, and the clawhammer romp “Late For School” emerged. Many more followed. Steve began to consider re-recording some of his earlier tunes along with the newer output. In Spring of 2008, he contacted McEuen, Wernick, and Trischka about making a banjo album. He wanted a team approach to the producer role, and when asked about the feasibility of such a collaboration, indicated he had seen it work successfully in moviemaking and anticipated the same with a music album.

McEuen began piecing together arrangements and Martin circulated a CD demo of 18 candidates for the album. With a block of free time approaching, Steve asked Tony to arrange for a studio and a core of musicians to record with. Wernick added arrangement ideas and completed a half-finished tune from the demo CD. Steve continued to write, including his first song, “Pretty Flowers,” a romantic waltz sung by both members of a seasoned couple (Vince Gill and Dolly Parton).

In late June of 2008, the musicians assembled at Steve’s spacious apartment overlooking New York’s Central Park. Russ Barenberg (guitar), Matt Flinner (mandolin), Trischka, McEuen, and Wernick worked on arrangements and prepared for the recording. A few days later, the full team, now including Skip Ward (bass) and Brittany Haas (fiddle) rode with Steve in a chauffeured Escalade over the George Washington Bridge a few miles into New Jersey to Bennett Studios, a top-of-the-line facility frequently used by pop singer Tony Bennett and owned by his son Dae Bennett (who served as engineer).

Recording mostly on his Florentine Gibson, but sometimes on his very first banjo (a 1950s Gibson RB-170), and using an antique RCA-44 microphone, Steve’s professionalism was apparent as he performed near-flawlessly on every take. With McEuen at the board briskly overseeing the sessions, several tunes a day were successfully laid down.

Embellishing the acoustic string treatments of the tunes, 78-year-old composer/conductor/multi-instrumentalist David Amram was called in, adding whistles to “Saga Of The Old West,” which also included the sounds of tabla (Indian hand drums). McEuen took the tapes to Nashville and added the voices of Vince and Dolly to “Pretty Flowers” and the picking of Scruggs, Jerry Douglas, and Stuart Duncan to some tracks, notably “Daddy Played The Banjo” sung by Tim O’Brien.

To add vocals by Irish singer Mary Black, Martin personally took the recordings to her home country, where Irish uilleann pipes were also added to a track. When all was said and done, the quaint and humorous CD package included a list of no less than 24 musicians, as well as an entertaining 24-page booklet of Martin’s notes about the tunes and his lifelong love of the banjo.

Two of the album’s songs were created and recorded as instrumentals at first, but, following the initial sessions, Steve started experimenting with lyrics. Both “Calico Train” and “Late For School” received elaborate story lines, the first of a woman discovering life isn’t over after a breakup, and the second of a hilarious series of mishaps in a student’s morning rush.

“Daddy PlayedThe Banjo” had originated years before as a poem by Steve with intentionally corny lyrics. But, as it took on a pretty clawhammer melody, a tender story emerged around idealized reminiscences and a difficult truth: I’m that banjo player, who never had a kid… With an assist from Earl’s son, Gary, the lyrics conclude with the wistful: Now I sit beneath the yellow tree, hoping that a kid somewhere is listening to me. The album begins with this song, Steve’s sweet unaccompanied frailing setting a pristine mood.

Is this the same intensely brash funnyman we met back in the ’70s? Therein lies much of the charm and appeal of “The Crow” and this new phase of Steve’s multi-faceted career. One wonders, “Why would an iconic, extremely in-demand, heavily-scheduled, repeatedly-honored movie and television star carefully and studiously approach a humble but proud, often-ignored musical genre with such determination and respect, willing to show himself at his most vulnerable?” The upcoming tour will capitalize on this intrigue, as well as on the fact that Martin has not toured in three decades, and not the least on the genuine interest and admiration he has earned for his musicianship in media appearances and airplay for “The Crow.” Watching it unfold will be an interesting pastime for the long-term bluegrass faithful who have never seen the likes of such a media star in their midst, trying his utmost to be accepted on their terms.

Undertaking this new live-performance venture has its challenges to the veteran star. On one hand, Martin notes, “This record has required more of my attention than even a movie,” and indeed, promoting a movie mostly involves merely talking about the movie, compared to the work of musicians who need to successfully recreate the music in a variety of challenging environments (particularly television studios, physically cold and rarely designed for good sound). On the other hand, creating an evening’s worth of music seems far easier than what it used to take for a night of comedy. “A new song takes up three whole minutes. A new joke uses about six seconds.”

Always a disciplined master of precision in performance, Steve is big on rehearsal, but even bigger on the need to “break in” material on stage. “When I created this act ‘Flydini,’ I went to Atlantic City and did it two weeks in a row, every night. And that’s how you get good at it. All I want to do is get over the feeling that you’re gonna blow it. I’ll get over that and then I’ll be fine.

“I think sometimes, what if David Letterman one night took out a fiddle and just burned it up? You’d go, ‘That’s really weird.’ I think of myself and go, ‘That’s like if Yo-Yo Ma suddenly juggled 12 balls.’ But, I actually do like the music. It’s so different for me. I actually think I’m staving off Alzheimer’s by getting on stage and having a completely different discipline. I’d never worked with other people, ever. This is the first I’ve ever worked on stage with other people.”

For his road band, Martin feels fortunate to have enlisted the talented and well-organized Steep Canyon Rangers. He made the connection through his wife, Anne, who is a friend of Rangers guitarist Woody Platt. Anne’s family has long appreciated bluegrass (her sister is a fiddler) and was acquainted with the band of Brevard, N.C., for some time. On a family visit last year, Steve met and ended up sitting in with them at a local bluegrass festival, his first ever. The upcoming concerts will concentrate on Steve’s recorded material, but will also feature a segment of the Rangers doing their own songs.

Considering his platinum-selling albums, many bestselling books, and numerous hit movies, it would surprise most observers to see Martin’s genuine excitement at his record’s success in the mostly under-the-radar world of bluegrass. Part of his satisfaction is at the prospect of other pickers learning his tunes. And with Homespun Tapes’ recent release of Tony Trischka’s banjo tabs of the music from “The Crow,” that prospect is now possible.

A pursuit that began nearly fifty years ago with Steve working on tablature in his ’57 Chevy has come full circle. It brings to mind those lyrics again: Now I sit beneath the yellow tree, hoping that a kid somewhere is listening to me.

Pete Wernick, “Dr. Banjo,” is a member of Hot Rize, Flexigrass, the Pete & Joan Wernick duo, and Long Road Home. He conducts music camps and writes a monthly column for Banjo Newsletter magazine and lives in Niwot, Colo.

Steve Martin Upcoming Tour Dates With The Steep Canyon Rangers:

October 1—Nashville, Tenn.—IBMA Awards Show, Ryman Aud.
October 3—San Francisco, Cal.—Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, Golden Gate Pk.
October 6—New York, N.Y.—Carnegie Hall (w/ Ralph Stanley).
October 7—Boston, Mass.—Wang Ctr.
October 9—Atlanta, Ga.—Chastain Park Ampthtr.
October 10—Charlotte, N.C.—Blumenthal Perf. Arts Ctr.
October 11—Nashville, Tenn.—Ryman Aud.
October 12—Washington, D.C.—Kennedy Center.
October 15—Toronto, ON, Canada—Roy Thomson Hall.
October 19—Philadelphia, Pa.—Verizon Thtr.
October 22—Chicago, Ill.—Cadillac Palace Thtr.
October 24—Denver, Colo.—Paramount Thtr.
October 27—Dallas, Tex.—Meyerson Symphony Ctr.
November 2—Spokane, Wash.—Martin Woldson Theatre at the Fox
November 3—Seattle, Wash.—Benaroya Hall

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