By Penny Parsons

Sometimes timing is key. For the Steep Canyon Rangers, synchronicity has repeatedly and often uncannily played a major role. Yet their success is not a fluke. It is the result of hard work, dedication, focus, enthusiasm, and the bands adroitness at being ready and able to take the ball and run when opportunities come their way. Still, looking back, sometimes it almost feels as if there’s magic at work for this group.

The stage was set when North Carolinians Woody Platt, Graham Sharp, and Charles Humphrey III met and became friends as freshmen at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They all had some experience with music, though none of them had ever thought about playing bluegrass prior to that time. Charles had studied violin and bass in middle school. Graham had played saxophone in high school. Woody knew a few guitar chords, and had been influenced by his mother’s record collection, which included Doc Watson, Bob Dylan, and Sweet Honey In The Rock. Once in college, the friends were beginning to listen to bands that were at the fringe of bluegrass, including New Grass Revival, Old & In The Way, Norman Blake, and David Grisman. Before they knew it, bluegrass had cast its spell.

Graham reflects, “I don t really know how I settled on the banjo. It was kind of a whim. But, I remember I came back from spring break my freshman year and had decided I was going to play the banjo. It seemed like a natural thing to be doing. Around that same time, Charles recalls, “I had a dream that I was playing bass, so the next day, I went out and signed up for bass [classes] at UNC.” It wasn’t long before Woody brought a guitar from home.

Meanwhile, Woody’s childhood friend, Mike Guggino, who grew up playing piano, saxophone, and guitar, had enrolled at Brevard College, majoring in music. There, he met two students from Kentucky who played banjo and fiddle, and they introduced him to bluegrass. “I just loved it,” he recalls. “So, I bought a mandolin, and pretty soon after that, I transferred to UNC Asheville and started playing bluegrass. Woody came home from college the next summer and said, ‘Hey, I’ve been playing bluegrass, and singing these songs.’ And I was like, ‘I got a mandolin, and I’ve been listening to bluegrass, too.’ That fall, he brought Charles and Graham up to the mountains and we played [together] for the first time, and shortly after that, the band started.”

Also around this time Graham, Charles, and Woody met Lizzie Hamilton, a fellow UNC student who played fiddle and sang. Lizzie had some experience playing traditional music, and she provided the final elements the guys needed to become a viable band. They came up with a name, pieced together a repertoire of songs, and began playing gigs.

During their first couple of years, the Steep Canyon Rangers played most of the bars and clubs in Chapel Hill, as well as fraternity parties and events at the university. Woody remembers, “The crowds, from the beginning, were always fairly big. And none of them were bluegrass fans. They were just kids that liked music. We weren’t really genre specific with our material. We played a Jimi Hendrix song at our first gig. It was just whatever songs we knew, but it quickly became bluegrass. We got into Tony Rice, and then it went backwards real fast. And when we found Flatt & Scruggs and the Stanley Brothers and Jimmy Martin, we just stayed there.”

From the beginning, the Rangers realized that it was important to have original material, if they were going to be successful. They all contributed some songs in the early days, but Graham and Charles have evolved to be the main songwriters in the band. The group’s first recording, released in 2001, had 11 original songs out of the 12. It was produced by Curtis Burch of New Grass Revival fame and recorded in Bowling Green, Ky. Their second album, “Mr. Taylor’s New Home,” which included ten originals, was recorded in Chapel Hill and released on North Carolina’s Bonfire Records. Several of the songs from this recording, most notably Mikes fine mandolin instrumental, “Knob Creek,” have turned out to be trademark songs for the Rangers.

Bonfire had good distribution and helped the Rangers get radio airplay and media attention. They began to get more and better job offers, including bookings on some jam band festivals in the area, which was a logical progression for a band of college kids. They also attended bluegrass festivals for fun, and a favorite that they discovered in their travels was RockyGrass in Colorado. After a couple of years of parking lot picking, they entered and won the RockyGrass band competition. “That got us on the map,” Woody notes. “We started playing some of the bigger clubs out there, like the Boulder Theater. Then we started getting booked on festivals like the Durango Meltdown, and eventually the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and we developed a fan base out there. For a while, that was our number one area to play.”

Meanwhile, back East they had graduated to playing more arts theaters, school auditoriums, and churches. It was at one such performance that they first caught the eye of Dave and Mark Freeman of Rebel Records. Not knowing much about the Rangers, the Freemans came anticipating a jam-band, but discovered to their amazement a group that was solidly rooted in the traditional bluegrass style. Soon after that, the Rangers signed with Rebel, began recording their self-titled 2004 release and subsequently relocated to Asheville.

In 2003, Lizzie decided to leave the band in order to attend graduate school, so the band underwent a period of restructuring. They didn’t have a permanent fiddle player when they made the first Rebel album, so they enlisted Josh Goforth and John Garris to help on the recording. Since Lizzie had been singing most of the high harmony, someone else now had to step up vocally. Graham and Charles had the lowest voices, and so Mike was elected to become the tenor singer. “None of us, besides Woody, had ever really thought about singing,” Mike relates. “I had the range, and I said, ‘Well, I’ll try.’ I never grew up singing, but I love it now. And I realize how important it is to the music. At least in traditional bluegrass, it’s all about the words and the singing, and that’s the first thing that people listen to.”

Still searching for a new fiddler player, the Rangers received an odd communication—an e-mail audition from a fiddler in Boston. It turned out that their friend Tony Watt, who had returned to Boston after a stint in Asheville, had mentioned to his buddy, Nicky Sanders, that the Rangers were looking for a fiddle player. Woody remembers being skeptical, but once Nicky drove to Asheville to meet them in person, his doubts evaporated. “His ability to learn was so apparent,” Woody marvels. “He’s a sponge. He was really, really good, so we went for it.” Nicky’s background is nothing like the other band members’, yet he was an easy fit and turned out to be just what the Rangers needed. He brings a youthful exuberance and a dedicated work ethic, along with a boatload of musical knowledge and talent.

Nicky grew up in San Francisco and began playing the violin when he was only five. By six, he was studying Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Handel. After high school, he enrolled in the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Though he was primarily studying classical composition, he also was introduced to jazz improvisation. From there, he feels it was a natural progression to bluegrass fiddle. “Certainly jazz and bluegrass are similar to me,” Nicky states. “Not just because of the improvisational aspect, but also because of the virtuosic aspect. Had it not been for jazz, I might never have learned to improvise, and thereby wouldn’t have had a segue into bluegrass. The creative aspect is what I enjoy so much about this music. Every night, it’s a different performance. With the addition of Nicky, the Rangers coalesced into a complete band, and they were on their way. Their next recording, “One Dime At A Time,” released in 2005, displayed just how far they had come. Woody credits producer Mike Bub for helping to bring out the band’s strengths. An important part of the Rangers appeal is their energy and enthusiasm on stage, and Bub understood that it was crucial not to lose that in the studio setting.

“Mike had a really good approach,” Woody asserts, “because he had seen that were tight—we rehearse. And we just got in a circle, put some baffles up, and went for it. I sang eighty percent of the vocals live. Now, we might not have had the perfection [of recording in isolation], but we harnessed the energy. And, moving forward from that, we’ve done a little bit of both.”

The approach proved successful, as the title track rose to number one on the Bluegrass Unlimited National Survey. The band’s work ethic showed itself not only in the precise, crisp instrumental work, but also in their progress as vocalists. Wade Mainer’s classic, “I Can’t Sit Down,” which was their first a cappella recording, became one of the groups most popular and most requested songs at live performances.

In the summer of 2005, the band caught the attention of Nashville-based manager Don Light. Light, who is credited with launching the careers of Jimmy Buffet, the Oak Ridge Boys, Keith Whitley, and others, had decided to return to working with bluegrass artists. He first saw the Rangers at the Graves Mountain Festival in Virginia. After hearing them rehearsing before the show, he was intrigued enough to take a second look. “I watched their whole set and the way they worked the mics, and I was pretty impressed,” he attests. “And I went over to see how they handled their record table and dealt with the fans and watched that.” Light decided that he had found a group that could be important. “I had a few conversations with them, and before too long they came and met with me. It was timely. They had just ended a relationship with a manager.”

What was it that drew him to this band? “They were uniquely the Rangers. I think they address the parameters of bluegrass. They’re respected and liked by people that like traditional bluegrass, and yet they can fit in nicely with the Colorado festivals and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival [San Francisco], and they can play clubs that have really young audiences. The repeat business on that band is a hundred percent. If we can get them somewhere, they’ll be going back. And we’ve never had a complaint on stage, off stage, about any member of that band. They conduct themselves as professionals. And, so, I have believed for some time that they could be real important to bluegrass. I think bluegrass really needs them.”

The Rangers are thrilled to have Light as an ally. “Don Light had a real main line right into Nashville,” Woody stresses. “I mean, we signed with Don Light, and we were on the Opry [snaps his fingers]. And that was huge. He’s helped us with a lot of the Nashville business and with IBMA and connections. I see Don Light as a kind of mentor.”

The biggest year yet for the Steep Canyon Rangers turned out to be 2006. They had signed with Light and were becoming known in Nashville after successful performances at the Opry and the Ryman Auditorium. Their stature had increased on the festival circuit, and they were playing higher profile venues. In April, the Rangers were invited to back bluegrass legend Curly Seckler when he performed at MerleFest. They got together with Curly to rehearse the night before the show, and the chemistry was immediate. Dave Freeman, who was present at the rehearsal, wrote, “The group amazed Curly and other onlookers with its command of and familiarity with the classic Flatt & Scruggs repertoire. After the band sailed through more than a dozen of Seckler’s chosen favorites, Curly looked up and said quietly, but with great respect, ‘You boys can really pick.’ Curly also marveled after the show that it was the first time he’d ever received a standing ovation for performing the song, ‘Salty Dog Blues.’ High praise considering the number of times he had performed that song over his seventy-year career!

Woody comments, “People still talk about that MerleFest set. [There] was so much fresh energy between Curly and the Rangers. It was an honor for us. To have a band like ours that is accepted by somebody like Curly—because were so not just about Flatt & Scruggs—it says a lot about him, and I think it says a lot about us.” That first performance went so well that the Rangers and Seckler have continued to schedule several shows together each year since then, including the PBS television show, Song Of The Mountains.

In September of 2006, Woody and his friend John Felty teamed up to present the first annual Mountain Song Festival in Brevard, N.C. The festival is a fundraiser for the local Boys and Girls Club, and it is held at the Brevard Music Center. “It’s the best venue,” Woody raves. “It has 1,800 covered seats, big stage, all the facilities. It holds about 3,000 people, if you count lawn space. The Rangers are the host band. We’ve had Doc Watson, IIIrd Tyme Out, Del McCoury, Tim O’Brien, Tony Rice, Sam Bush, David Grisman, the Seldom Scene. We’ve raised over a hundred thousand dollars for the Boys and Girls Club. We rely on community sponsorships. Actually, the key to the whole thing is to raise the sponsorships locally so everybody locally is excited about it and invested in it.”

Woody is also proud of the fact that the Mountain Song is leading the way among festivals with its green approach. “I really think this needs to become an issue,” he declares. “We don’t allow people to bring in anything. We have bottled water, but we recycle the bottles. We sell beer, but we only sell cans that are recyclable. We have these restaurants set up, and all of our vendors use compostable rice utensils, plates, and cups. It’s a global issue, so were just doing our part to leave as little waste behind as possible.”

The Steep Canyon Rangers visibility further increased when they were named IBMA Emerging Artist Of The Year in 2006. They carried the momentum of that achievement into their next recording project, “Lovin’ Pretty Women,” released in 2007. Two songs from the album charted: the title track and “A Ramblin’ Man Is A Ramblin Man,” both written by Graham. The CD remained on Bluegrass Unlimited’s Top 15 Albums for nine months.

“Lovin’ Pretty Women” and the Rangers next CD were both produced by Ronnie Bowman and engineered by Wyatt Rice. The association with these two seasoned professionals in the studio has proved invaluable to the band. “To have two people who are just absolute experts couldn’t be a better situation for us,” Graham says. Woody adds, “I think it’s very helpful to have allies that are already respected in your industry.”

The Rangers added another vital link in their chain of support in January of 2008, when they signed with Keith Case & Associates for bookings. Case is a venerable Nashville agency with a long history of success with bluegrass artists, most notably Alison Krauss. The Rangers sound was becoming a bit more eclectic with songs such as “Call The Captain,” which harkens back to the folk protest songs of the ’60s, and “Cumberland Moon” with its hint of Celtic flavor.

In their new CD, “Deep In The Shade” (Rebel1834), the Rangers have stretched the boundaries even more. Though the instrumentation has not changed, the songs and arrangements are less traditional than anything they’ve done previously. “We branched out a little bit more on this record, and took some more chances,” Graham reflects. “It was the most fun I’ve had in the studio, so I think a lot of that comes through on the record.”

A prolific songwriter, Graham wrote six of the twelve songs on the new album. His inspirations often come from everyday life. For instance, he wrote “Hollerin’ House” one night in his basement. “When everybody goes to bed at my house, that’s my time, when I get to pick and write,” he explains. “The basement is sort of my hollerin’ house, where you go and make a bunch of racket. The ‘Mountain’s Gonna Sing’ is a really personal song, and I think that’s probably my favorite song on the record. I wrote it one day when I was driving back to the mountains, glad to be home. One night, after watching a Gram Parsons documentary, I sat down and wrote ‘Have Mercy.’ ‘Lay Low,’ thats a very different song,” he admits. “My wife said she thought

I should write a song about refugees. It’s kind of a grim song. It’s a lot about war, but when I was writing it, I was just thinking about standing up for what you believe in. Love songs and heartbreak songs are good, but we also try to do songs that have a message—things that you can listen to and on the tenth time you hear it, you can still have something to think about in the words.”

Graham also gets ideas from books he reads. “I got a handful of songs for that ‘Lovin’ Pretty Women’ record when I was reading the Bible,” he says. “I read maybe one book between ‘Lovin’ Pretty Women’ and this latest record, and probably wrote four of the songs kind of out of that book—not directly out of the book, but it gives you ideas and images. For me, its been helpful to have a lot different ways to write a song, so if one way’s not clicking one day, maybe another way will be.”

Charles agrees that songwriting is not necessarily a straightforward process. “Sometimes you’ll write a song the first time you sit down, and sometimes it may be something you come back to two or three years later,” he notes. “I like to write about characters, history, social injustice—touch on emotions. I really like having a who, what, when, and where.” Charles has three songs on the new recording. “‘There Aint No Easy Street,’ that’s about a guy who loses his job from overseas, and he can’t get a break. I like that one especially now, because there’s so much talk about this economic crisis going on. ‘I Thought That She Loved Me’ is about a girl that comes from the North down to the South and kind of takes advantage of this southern boy. ‘Shades Of Gray’ is about a relationship.

Rounding out the album are Nicky’s rousing instrumental, “Mourning Dove,” inspired by the bird that wakes him up each day, the Merle Haggard honky-tonker “I Must Be Somebody Else You’ve Known,” and a wonderful a cappella version of the Leadbelly classic “Sylvie.”

The CD was released to coincide with the Steep Canyon Rangers fall 2009 tour with comedian/banjo player Steve Martin. In another stroke of synchronicity, the Rangers first met Steve through his wife, Anne, who is a longtime friend of Woody’s brother. Steve and Anne were vacationing in Brevard in 2007 and invited Woody and Mike (who both live in Brevard) over for a picking session. The next year, the Rangers invited Steve to join them at the Mountain Song Festival. “He said, ‘Sure,’” Woody recalls. “He called to talk about what songs we’d play, and we had a preshow rehearsal. We took it real seriously, so we learned the music well and we had a lot of confidence, and I think he enjoyed us being a good support on stage.”

A few months later, Martin made another guest appearance with the Rangers at a club in New York. Soon after that, Steve invited them to join him on some shows. In May of 2009, the Rangers performed with Steve at Club Nokia in Los Angeles and at the Rubin Museum in New York. Then in June, they played together on A Prairie Home Companion. These shows were so successful that a sevenweek tour was arranged for fall, including performances at the Mountain Song Festival, the IBMA Awards Show, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Toronto, and London. Martin sums up his feelings about the Rangers this way, “The Steep Canyon Rangers bring both innovation and tradition to their music at the highest level. Playing with them has been a high point in my musical life.”

The sort of magical success they’ve been experiencing might create interpersonal conflict in some bands, but the Rangers remain steadfast and grounded. They are proud of their ongoing relationship with Rebel Records. “Being signed to Rebel was a really wonderful experience for us,” Woody states. “This is our fourth record on Rebel, and lots of people move on or change their course or break up, and were just staying focused, and I’m proud of both parties for being able to maintain that relationship.”

As the band celebrates its tenth anniversary, the members credit their personal friendships and their democratic, team-oriented approach for keeping them together. “We’re all equal members in this band,” Mike stresses. “Bands like Blue Highway and Seldom Scene and Hot Rize have been important influences on us. We realize how similar we are to them, that we’ve kept the same lineup. I like to listen to bands that have a unique style and don’t sound like anybody else. That’s what the first generation did. It was all bluegrass, but they all sounded different, and they all had their own thing. That’s a big goal for us, to try to be original and keep developing our sound in a good way.

Woody adds, “The very beginning of bluegrass was original music. So were kind of following in the footsteps, but we have our own unique, collective, youthful approach to it. It’s real song-oriented. We really just think about what this song needs, not what this instrument needs, or what this person needs. It’s just a real collective kind of thing that were working on.”

Penny Parsons has worked in the bluegrass industry for over 25 years in sales, marketing, public relations, and journalism. She currently manages bluegrass legend Curly Seckler.

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