0:00 - [Music]
0:09 - Hi everybody! Welcome to "News Now" from the Daily Inter Lake. I'm your host, Taylor Inman. This week, I had the opportunity to chat with a couple of members from the Bluegrass Band Steep Canyon Rangers, who are playing at the Wachholz College Center this Friday at 8 pm.
0:12 - The Steep Canyon Rangers are a Grammy-winning bluegrass band from Asheville, North Carolina. They've been together for more than 20 years and are frequent collaborators with comedian Steve Martin, who can also play a mean banjo. The band is excited to get back to the Rocky Mountains where they say they've always been welcomed with open arms.
0:22 - Well, and you guys are coming from me. You're coming to me from somewhere outside of Asheville, North Carolina right now, right? Very nice, yeah.
0:33 - All right, so let's see, can you tell me a little bit about how the band formed? I know it's been around for a long time.
0:37 - The band formed in the late 1900s in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where the University of North Carolina and the Chapel Hill is, and a bunch of us were in school together and just started a band, really for fun. Actually, only one guy who was there in their very, very original was still with us, but there was a lot of shuffling around of members right at the beginning. Yeah, so the band started there in Chapel Hill, a bunch of buddies. Been together now for over 20 years. The band originally moved, kind of transferred over here to Asheville, Western North Carolina. A bunch of the guys were from here, and yeah, you can edit steady since then. Awesome, yeah.
1:55 - It seems pretty common for a band that's been around for a long time to have members kind of like, you know, come and go like that. From when you started it back then to what it is now, like, what's the biggest difference, do you think?
2:01 - I mean, a couple of things. Neither Aaron nor I were in the band at the point when it started all those years ago, so you've had personnel changes, but there's a really solid culture that a lot of it has stayed the same musically. I mean, the band started as a really strictly traditional bluegrass band, you know, traditional as in like staying within the mold, all playing around one microphone, all acoustic. All the material was really much in the vein of like traditional bluegrass music and aiming...
2:46 - To play on the act, like really, really great, really traditional Bluegrass festivals, which the band did really well for a long time. And then, you know, things changed and it steadily changed. It's changed, changed, and moving away from that traditional mold has probably been the biggest change that the band made over the years in various ways. Yeah.
3:09 - Um, I did want to ask, so why Bluegrass? What draws both of you guys to Bluegrass music?
3:15 - You know, growing up in North Carolina, and particularly, excuse me, in the mountains here, you're kind of steeped in it. I wasn't really interested in it as a child or even a teenager. But when I got in my 20s and ended up in Boone, North Carolina, and ran into this sort of traditional music, it just... it... it just sort of hit a spot in me that had always been there. And it's... it's incredibly energetic and lively music. And the people that I was drawn to at that time were much like the Rangers are now, sort of taking it in new directions. Like taking that baseline of great instrumentation, great instrumentalists, great arrangements, great vocals and harmonies, great songs, but sort of playing them in a little more modern way. It was new grass at the time, you know, was what a lot of that was called.
4:25 - And at the same time, there's this really rich tradition that goes way back. And I mean, I am not, matter of fact, when I joined, as I was watching, you know, we did a courting process over a few months where, you know, I went and played some gigs, and we would hang out, and a lot of us would just sing if we hang out well together. And I would see these guys, particularly Mike Gagino and Graham, just ripping these traditional Bluegrass songs backstage before shows. And I remember talking to Grant, saying, "Graham, I don't... I don't know, though. I don't... I mean, I recognize those, but I don't know them all, you know? I don't have the pedigree in Bluegrass you guys do." And he said, "That's okay. That's not even what we play now. Don't worry about it. We're just warming up." That's sort of where we came from. But what you need to do now is what we're doing now and what you do now.
5:26 - Something new with an existing set musical form.
5:33 - Yeah, yeah. How about you, Barrett?
5:36 - I'd say... I mean, it really resonated with me when Aaron said lively music because when the band started, I wasn't in the band, but I was in Chapel Hill, and we were all buddies. And I was deep in the classical music world. That was my thing. I was studying music in college. I'm the only guy in the band who was at that time. And I worked really hard on it, and I was really proud of it. It's really beautiful music, and nobody came to see me do it, really, or cared, you know? And nobody really wanted to listen to it so much. And yet, these buddies of mine who started this band just kind of from scratch, it's almost like they started the band before they could play the instruments even. They just kind of wanted to have a good time and party and ride out of the gates. It's like everybody wanted to go see this band, including me, and party and have a good time. So that taught me a good lesson about, you know, how much fun am I having? What do I really want to do with this? And meanwhile, as I'm getting into that music, I had a real kind of, I didn't grow up with that music, but I had this really, what's typical of, I feel like, our age group, introduction to that music kind of through a hippie lens, as in, like, I heard Jerry Garcia play the banjo on this old "Old and in the Way" album, and that was my introduction to Bluegrass. And the band Fish, who I loved when I was a teenager, they played Bluegrass music. And I just got my wheels turned. And then around the same time, I had an English teacher of mine introduce me to Doc Watson, and I was 16. And yeah, all those things kind of converged. And it's funny now, after all these years and all the different kinds of music that especially Aaron and I have been into, that, yeah, it seems kind of inevitable now that we would converge on this kind of style of music or some form of it, anyway.
6:42 - So speaking of new music or new Bluegrass, I saw that you guys put out a new single recently. I listened to it, and I really enjoyed it. Can you correct me if I'm wrong? It seemed a little bit different than some of your previous albums. Can you tell me a little bit about it?
7:57 - Yeah, yeah. It's called "Morning Shift."
8:00 - And yeah, it has some stuff that's pretty outside of the mold of certainly traditional Bluegrass, and it's got some stuff that's really inside the mold of traditional Bluegrass. And we're always straddling that, we're always toying with that as a band. That was very, very traditional by any standards. It was totally, totally traditional. And having moved away from that and dealing with moving away from that and our audience is dealing with moving away from that. You at least listened to that last single, and yeah, it's not very much Bluegrass going on in that song. But we have another single coming out, like, any second now. When is it coming out, Aaron?
8:44 - I think it's next week. I remember, no, no, it's, didn't she say the 8th or 11th? Do they come out on Tuesdays still?
8:52 - I think it's the 11th. It must be next Tuesday. Yeah, that makes sense. And that one is a Bluegrass song, no doubt. Yeah, it functions totally, or it's more of a Bluegrass song, the beat of it anyway. So yeah, some, we do both.
9:15 - That takes you out of the technical running for Bluegrass, but it sure does. It does. One level of technicalities tells you that you can't have drums in Bluegrass. A deeper level of technicality will show you that like JD Crowe had drums on an album, you know? Yeah, exactly. The album comes out in September, and these are the first two singles off of it. There might be one more before it, no, probably not. There's probably just a focus track when it comes. There might be one more that comes out before the September 8th or 9th street date.
10:00 - Yeah, one of the most notable things about the album is it's the first album that we've done with Aaron. I mean, you're talking to the very much the two newest members of this band. This is the first album that we've done with Aaron, and it will forever be the first album that we did with Aaron. That's one of the most notable things about it, for sure. And it worked out really well. We had like a magical, bizarre, awesome recording experience where we lived in a cabin in the woods with our producer Daryl Scott for almost a week and really put everything into it. And we're real proud of it. It comes out in the fall. A few songs will be released before, one already, and one soon, and then another win to come.
10:36 - And then, yeah, then the whole thing comes out in the fall. We'll be playing songs from that album, a lot of songs from that album when we play in Kalispell.
10:46 - Aaron, with this being your first album, how was your experience recording it and being a part of it?
10:51 - Well, I've done a lot of recording in the past, so in one sense, it was just how recording goes. It's alternately inspiring and deflating and grueling and enjoyable. It's an emotional roller coaster. But I don't know, being able to work with these guys as a band, and fit into that existing framework, and how gracious and welcoming everybody has been to me, and just how smoothly the whole thing has gone. It continues to suspiciously go smoothly. And then, of course, Daryl Scott, who is one of my heroes, was there with us all week. So, I mean, this whole thing with the Rangers, it's been a year, but the whole thing has been kind of like a whirlwind. And I haven't even had much time to sit and think about what was happening. I just needed to do it. That's sort of what that week up there was because we were just working really hard on harmonies and songs. It was really cool, and maybe I'll go inside and sit and think about it and realize how cool it was. But we've been... We just never stopped moving, really. I mean, we just never stopped moving. Matter of fact, we're all sort of thinking about the next one. This one hadn't even come out, and we're like, "Okay, what do we do next?" And that's one thing I like about this band, is they love to work hard, and that's... I do too. Just consistently, always trying to get better. All in all, I think that recording process was, as Barrett described, pretty magical.
12:53 - Nice. So, have you guys been touring a lot this year so far, or where does Kalispell kind of fall in your tour?
13:01 - This year, it's we tour all the time.
13:04 - Um, and unlike, I mean, we do it the way we do it, everybody does it differently, and it's all pretty relative what's a lot or not a lot.
13:15 - Um, we don't go on Long Long tours, you know, we don't go away for a long tour and then come home for a long time. We just go and go and come home and go and come home, kind of constantly. So we're always in between coming and going.
13:29 - So typically, you know, we're either on the road or where we were a few days ago, or we're about to be a few days from now. We're always kind of coming and going, and what are we going to do on this next little run that we take up there in the West? What are we bringing to it, and how are we going to make those shows really, really special and really cool for those people up there?
13:56 - Um, so that's where it falls in the tour, between like trying to do something really great and trying to do something really great. Yeah, and just stop the non-stop goodness of it all, I guess.
14:11 - Non-stop of it all, and man, those, you know, I was here. I just kind of like, uh, logged in while Aaron was talking about his own history with Montana and with the West. Yeah, this band has a, yeah, there was a long time in the early days where a lot of us who were in the Bluegrass world, we were either playing on the East Coast, like in the Southeast a lot, or if we weren't here, we wanted to be in the Rockies, basically. We wanted to be in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and these cool mountain towns because there was just such enthusiasm and such an interesting fresh take on acoustic music and bluegrass music.
14:58 - It was during the time of like, um, leftover salmon was really exciting, and then eventually Yonder Mountain String Band. These were Colorado Western bands, and there were all these great festivals out there. So coming to Montana and playing is not, yeah, it's not just any place to us. The West, the Rocky Mountains holds a special place for us. We've just had endless, like, uh, can't even remember, begin to remember all of the amazing good times we've had in that region and all the great shows that we've gotten to play. So we see that on our calendar, coming to Montana, and we make a special note. We're gonna have a good time.
15:40 - Yeah, yeah. I thought it was interesting when I moved out here, there's not really...
15:45 - A difference in the music that people like so much in Kentucky and out here in Montana, and I was surprised that they like Bluegrass so much and folk music. Um, and I just, I just chalk it up to like mountain people. Maybe mountain people, you know, they're to me, there's some kind of continuous link between just people who, when you're in Montana and just visually, you're bombarded with such spectacular natural beauty, and there's so much of a tendency for people to really enjoy nature in the outdoors and get out there and appreciate it. There's a link between that and acoustic music. It's to me, natural, cute people playing instruments and singing in a down-home kind of way. Those things link up to me. I can see that. I could see that.
16:41 - Um, so are you guys gonna do anything fun while you're here? I always like to ask people who visit the area if they're gonna check it out if you guys have time.
16:49 - Hopefully. I mean, we tend to move pretty fast, you know, and like, we're on, unfortunately in a lot of ways, we're on to the next place pretty quickly. But as much as we can, and we definitely have people who like to fish in the band, you know, maybe they'll get out and do that, get out, take a hike. We'll do what we can. We're always working too, you know, so it's like, any given day is just as likely as not to be taken up with a bunch of writing, rehearsing, and that kind of thing, right?
17:28 - Well, hopefully you guys will get to hang out a little bit. It is a really great place to fly fish, so I hope you guys get the opportunity to do that. Can't wait to see our Montana people. It's gonna be a great night.
17:37 - Yes, agree. We're excited to have you guys. Cool. Okay, well, you'll have a good one, alright?
17:44 - You too. Thanks, Taylor. Yeah, yeah. Bye-bye.
17:48 - The new album "Morning Shift" by the Steep Canyon Rangers will be out on September 8th on all music streaming services. For tickets to their show on Friday, go to the Wall Coach College Center website at walkholchcollegecenter.org and look under the schedule of events.