The Steep Canyon Rangers Live Their Lives One Gig At A Time

This article appeared in the September 2006 issue of Bluegrass Unlimited.

Dressed in suits and ties, weaving in and out in front of a single vocal mic, the Steep Canyon Rangers present an appearance as polished and clean-cut as any festival promoter could want. Their music is traditional, their material is original, and they are serious students of the originators of bluegrass: Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers, Jimmy Martin. What some folks might find hard to believe is a snapshot from their early years, sitting around a college apartment picking: there are tapestries, there are ponytails, there are dreads. They’ve come a long way and, as their newest Rebel Records release One Dime at a Time demonstrates from where it sits on the Bluegrass Unlimited charts, they stand poised to make some serious contributions to the bluegrass canon.

A thoroughly modern band, the members of SCR didn’t play bluegrass while they were growing up; they didn’t learn at their grandfathers’ knees. The four original members met while in college. Woody Platt (guitar), Graham Sharp (banjo), and Charles Humphries (bass) all attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mike Guggino (mandolin) grew up with Woody in Brevard, NC, and attended UNC-Asheville. At the beginning of their senior year they coalesced with original fiddler Lizzie Hamilton to form a band, even though none of them, except Lizzie, had seriously played bluegrass before.

They all had some background in music, though not necessarily bluegrass. Charles had relatives who played bluegrass and he’d heard Bill Monroe and Doc Watson thanks to his grandfather’s record collection. Woody started playing guitar in high school. Graham spent his high school years playing saxophone, and Mike, whose father is a classical pianist, also played sax, as well as piano and guitar. When in their early twenties they all found bluegrass, or perhaps it found them. In either case it took ahold hard and hasn’t let go.

From their very first gig they played original material. Graham remembers David Kuo, who played lead guitar with the band early on, mentioning that, “having original songs is what you really need to be a band,” so he started writing songs. That immediately set them apart from other bands. Eleven of the twelve songs on their first CD, Old Dreams and New Dreams, released in 2001, are original—eight by Graham, three by other members of the band. That pattern has held for the band’s three subsequent CDs, each featuring almost all original material. Graham contributes the most songs, by far, with Charles just behind. Mike’s instrumentals, especially “Knob Creek,” are crowd favorites. Woody had a song on Old Dreams and New Dreams and co-wrote the oft-requested “Carolina Home.”

The band went through a major change after releasing their second CD, 2002’s Mr. Taylor’s New Home. Lizzie Hamilton left that band to return to school, leaving them without their fiddler and tenor singer. They didn’t immediately find someone, so their third CD, which is self-titled and the first to come out on Rebel Records, featured two guest fiddlers: Josh Goforth and John Garris.

Dave Freeman, from Rebel, had seen the band play and signed them to a record deal when Lizzie was still with them. Woody remembers talking to him when Lizzie left. “Rebel was committed,” he says. “Dave wasn’t concerned about her leaving.” The time that the band was in between fiddlers was the only time in their history that they felt they weren’t moving steadily forward. They continued to book gigs and tour, but musically they felt somewhat unfocused. The solution to that situation came from an unexpected direction: Boston.

Nicky Sanders, a San Francisco, California, native who was living in Boston, Mass., after attending Berklee College of Music there, had heard of the SCR through a friend. He searched them out and, in a thoroughly modern fashion, auditioned by sending them MP3s and little video files of his playing. The boys liked what they heard so Nicky strengthened his position by driving sixteen hours to audition in person. “That, in itself, was impressive,” Woody said. “We knew he was pretty interested in the job.”

A classically-trained violinist since the age of five, Nicky had only been playing bluegrass for a couple of years. His bluegrass listening consisted of Stuart Duncan, Aubrey Haynie, and Mark O’Connor—all great musicians, but not terribly well suited to the SCR style. The guys quickly introduced Nicky to Benny Martin, Paul Warren, Bobby Hicks, and Scotty Stoneman, in addition to younger players Michael Cleveland and Josh Goforth, and he proved a willing and enthusiastic sponge. He seamlessly incorporated traditional bluegrass fiddling into his repertoire and to listen to him one would never guess he came from a classical background.

“One thing that classical music gave me was a level of comfort with the instrument, overall,” Nicky says. “Classical musicians can hear a thing and replicate it. But being able to, at the drop of a hat, create something fresh and interesting that’s in the style is the most challenging part. I still haven’t mastered that.” Listeners might disagree.

Nicky joined the band just after the self-titled CD was released in 2004. By the time the band recorded One Dime at a Time, they’d had over a year and a couple hundred gigs to solidify their sound. The fact that they play so much together, and practice so much standing in a circle, contributed to their decision to record the new CD as live as possible.

Their two previous albums were recorded by Jerry Brown at the Rubber Room Studio in Chapel Hill where they did a lot of layering—recording the rhythm tracks first and putting the leads and vocals on top of that. That style of recording can result in a clean and polished sound, but it can also drain the life out of the music. This time around the SCR wanted to capture the energy they had while on stage playing live. They also knew they wanted to work with a producer. Their manager at the time was friends with Mike Bub, who had expressed interest in doing some producing. They didn’t know Bub well, having met him only a couple times at festivals, but he called them one day while they were driving down the road. Woody recalls, “He said, ‘I’d be willing to help. I see my role as helping you figure out how to get what you already do down on tape.’ He felt like we had a lot of things figured out.”

Bub turned out to be a perfect match for the band. They came to his house in Nashville, Tenn., for a couple of days to work on arrangements and make plans. They recorded at the Butcher Shoppe studio with engineer David Ferguson in an extremely short amount of time—about two and a half days. Fergie set the mics up in a circle in one room and the whole band cut everything live. Almost all the breaks, some of the harmony vocals, and all the lead vocals except for two songs went down at the same time.

Recording that way is an artistic choice, one that harkens back to the early days of bluegrass. It values energy over perfection, entertainment over vanity. The result is a very unified sound, noticeably more vital and solid than their previous efforts. First and foremost these five guys are a band. “We set ourselves apart by playing really well as a group, which is probably our biggest strength,” says Mike.

“There are a lot of good bands out there that everybody loves, but over time they change lineups,” Charles continues. “If you actually have the same group of people together, that adds something to the band. It has a lot to do with being able to travel together, and to get along. We’re lucky. We have a great dynamic.”

Woody adds, “I think a big part of our band, our uniqueness, is that we’re buddies. If we weren’t in a band we’d probably still hang out a whole lot. We’ve spent SO much time together. And right when we get off the road Graham goes ‘When are we practicing?!’” The core of the band has been together for more than seven years, a factor that has a lot to do with their unified sound and their steady rise in popularity. Another factor is the amount that they practice.

“Charles’s room was an unfinished open basement,” Mike remembers. “He hung tapestries to box off a corner.”

“My room was right over his room, and the bass,” says Woody. “Charles was on this seven a.m., metronome click, bass-practice-every-morning kick. I’ve never slept with earplugs so many times!”

“You’d hear Charles practicing at eight in the morning,” says Mike, “and you’d think, I gotta get up and practice!! Man he is working hard. I need to work hard. So we’d all be in our rooms with our doors shut with metronomes on and Flatt and Scruggs playing.”

Their house became known as the place to pick in Asheville. People would drop in at all hours to play and sing. But after a hundred dates a year and living together, it became too much even for these best friends and they had to get a little space. Mike and Woody moved back to their hometown of Brevard; Charles and Graham each got married. Mike, too, is now married. Charles has a two-year-old daughter named Tiffin Rose. Graham and his wife Stephanie have a baby due in July.

“Our first tours out west were just epic,” Woody continues. “We’d have three gigs and then four days off. We’d sleep in the dirt, camp, and fish. That was OK, we were in college. But now it’s definitely more about the business. I think one of the keys to keeping the band together and keeping your families happy is having a sustainable schedule. We usually just do the weekend with the following week if it’s going to be a long tour. Being home is just as important as being gone. It’s healthy.”

The guys divide their gigs into four categories. In addition to playing at traditional bluegrass festivals, the SCR play at cross-market festivals, theaters, and lots of bars. Since they were a college band, they originally played bars and venues in college towns and expanded outward from there. They love that they get to play in different kinds of places, although it does sometimes cause scheduling problems. If they get off stage at a bar at two a.m. and have to be on stage at a festival at noon the next day, they know no one is going to get much sleep. They hope to work their way from being the noon band to being the four or five o’clock band, which will make their lives slightly easier.

Some of their favorite festivals are the cross-market festivals, like Floyd Fest or Harvest Fest, that have only one or two bluegrass bands. Graham says, “If people see bluegrass once a year, or once every three or five years, it’s really exciting to be that band. We play shows where that’s the case for 60-70% of the audience.”

Woody adds, “A lot of our fans have all these records and maybe one bluegrass record and it’ll be ours. They’re not really bluegrass lovers, but they have our CDs and they like our music.”

This year the band is entering the festival-hosting arena. They are hosting the Willow Oak Bluegrass Festival in Roxboro, North Carolina in June. Graham thinks they should have games, as if they were hosting a party. A Slip-N-Slide on the hill, maybe? Woody’s big project for this year is the Mountain Song Festival in Brevard, North Carolina in September. He organized the festival as a benefit for the Boys and Girls Club of Transylvania County. His mom is president of their board. Doc Watson, David Holt, the Biscuit Burners, IIIrd Tyme Out, and the SCR are scheduled to appear. This year it is in an 1,800 seat covered amphitheater. He already has a larger location in mind for next year if this year is a success.

Their next CD is already in the planning stages. They’re working up new material all the time; with so many writers finding songs is never a problem. When someone brings a song to the group, the arrangement of it is a democratic process. Initially the writer will sit down with Woody, who almost always sings lead, to work out the exact melody and the best key. As a group they work out the kick-off and breaks. Usually it’s easy, occasionally it’s not.

“If a song’s not working—say we have a waltz and it seems like it’s not happening,” Mike says, “we’ll try it as a fast 4/4 bluegrass song. Sometimes it works.”

“We’ve tried every song at every tempo and in every time signature,” Woody adds. “Some of them go well all ways. Either way it’s good for a laugh.”

“When it’s your song you can do whatever you want with it,” Graham points out.

Charles has lately been working on a CD of his own songs. Titled, “Songs From The Road,” it contains entirely original material. The SCR guys played some on it, along with other friends. Charles is releasing it himself. “Just go grassroots with it,” he says. “If people like it, hopefully it’ll get out there.” It will be available by May.

The SCR are enthusiastic about the management team they have assembled. Don Light of Don Light Talent manages the band. He is based in Nashville, Tenn., and works with Mike Drudge, a respected bluegrass booking agent. They have many connections and give the band a lot of credibility in the bluegrass world. Their booking agent comes from the other end of the musical spectrum. Hugh Southard at Blue Mountain Artists in Charlotte, NC, has mostly blues artists on his roster and the SCR are his only bluegrass band. He is enthusiastic about their band, has been to several of their shows, and is actively trying to expand their market beyond traditional bluegrass venues. Woody says it’s been a project getting the two agencies to work together, since they come from such different directions, but he talks to them both every day and he has confidence that they can move the band in the direction they want to go.

Rebel Records has been great to the band, as well. The SCR are very happy with the support the label gives them, the promotion they’ve gotten, and the complete artistic freedom Rebel lets them have. They are honored to be included on an upcoming a cappella compilation that Rebel is releasing. “I Can’t Sit Down,” the gospel song from their new release, will appear on it alongside cuts from Ralph Stanley, Larry Sparks, the Country Gentlemen, and IIIrd Tyme Out. The final two members of their team are their sponsors: Fiddler’s Feast, a dinner theater in Pigeon Forge, Tenn, and the Colorado Case Company.

The SCR will continue to travel the country, play, sing, and write. For this talented group, which is doubtless the only band in the history of bluegrass to have gotten their name off of a bottle of stout, the future is bright. As they sang on their self-titled CD, they’ve got the “blue bluegrass blues.” But unlike in the song they do know what to do.

“For as much as we want to go out and bring other people into bluegrass, we want to appeal to people who are really hard-core bluegrass fans,” Graham says. “We want to be their favorite band. It’s such a crazy feeling to stand up there next to the people who, five years ago, were our idols. We couldn’t have imagined ever being anywhere close to their level.”

“Getting accepted by the bluegrass community, coming from this,” Woody holds up the picture of them with long hair, “it’s a cool thing. It’s a niche; it’s a certain sound. There’s not much else that’s accepted into that community. It’s a challenge, and it’s been a big accomplishment for us as a group.”