I realized I still had a long drive ahead of me, so I started to pass the time by singing to myself. There was no way to turn back, and 45 minutes later I saw the first sign-for Calabasas off Las Virgenes Canyon Road. Before I knew it I was driving up Malibu Canyon Road-a steep canyon, just like the rangers. On my way home I made a wrong turn coming down Seaver Drive at the bottom of the hill, and turned left when I should have turned right. They may have given it a bluegrass arrangement, but you could still hear Libba’s voice in the lines, What a pleasure it was to hear Elizabeth Cotten’s beautiful song, Shake Sugaree. (From Steep Canyon Rangers’ North Carolina Songbook) King’s Stand By Me, Thelonius Monk’s Blue Monk, Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down by Charlie Poole and Earl Scruggs, Sweet Baby James by James Taylor, Drunkard’s Hiccups by Tommy Jarrell, I’ve Endured by Ola Bell Reed, and Long Journey Home by Rosa Lee and Doc Watson. North Carolina Songbook (Yep Roc Records– YEP-2667) celebrates that tradition, with eight songs from their home state, including Elizabeth Cotten’s Shake Sugaree, Ben E. The Steep Canyon Rangers come from Asheville, North Carolina too-ground zero of the Great American Folk Festival.
STEEP CANYON RANGERS NORTH CAROLINA SONGBOOK HOW TO
That was where Pete first heard the instrument and decided to master it and eventually to teach others through his legendary red-covered manual, first published on a mimeograph machine- How To Play the Five-String Banjo. Then in 1935 Pete Seeger’s father, Charles Seeger, brought his16 year-old son to that same Asheville Festival, where he first fell in love with the five-string banjo-and the rest is history. He wrote Good Old Mountain Dew and I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground. They asked Asheville’s old-time banjo player and folk song collector Bascom Lamar Lunsford-The Minstrel of the Appalachians-to invite a few of his musician friends to liven up the festival, and suddenly a new tradition was born: ” If the name Bascom Lamar Lunsford doesn’t ring a bell, you have probably sung his songs. And as I wrote ten years ago, “It didn’t turn out to be the flowers. The rhododendrons were in bloom, you see, so the Asheville City Council decided to have a rhododendron festival to celebrate their favorite local attraction. North Carolina is where the first folk festival was born in the summer of 1927. Goodnight you moon light ladies, rock-a-bye sweet baby Jamesĭeep greens and blues are the colors I choose, won’t you let me go down in my dreams? Steep Canyon Rangers last song was Sweet Baby James, by James Taylor, straight off their new album North Carolina Songbook, first performed last April at Merle Fest in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. The audience thought it was funny-and perhaps it was-but I don’t like the idea of cancelling a show once you have accepted it-just because “something better comes along.” It’s a matter of honor. And that was how they wound up here tonight. Their booking at Pepperdine was already advertised, but they were not about to turn down a show on Netflix with Steve Martin-so Pepperdine had to wait. It seems that he called them up and said they had a more important booking-with him on Netflix. In addition to their own band they are known for their collaborations with comedian and banjo player Steve Martin-who was the reason their scheduled concert from last year was postponed to this January. Nicky Sanders (fiddle and vocals-from California), Mike Ashworth (drums and vocals), and Barrett Smith (bass and vocals). Their six-man band is made up of Woody Platt (guitar and vocals), Graham Sharp (banjo and vocals-and songwriter), Mike Guggino (mandolin/mandola and vocals). I had come to hear songs from their latest album, North Carolina Songbook-released Friday, November 29-Record Store Day-to celebrate artists from their home state. I had heard they were different, but I had no idea how much. Later in the show they pulled out another Dylan classic-one of his earliest-from a bootleg album-”Let Me Die In My Footsteps, before I go down under the ground.” Little did I expect to hear Dylan’s anti-fallout shelter song at a Steep Canyon Rangers concert. That was the Steep Canyon Rangers first song, by Bob Dylan. She promised she’d be right there with me I got me a date with a pretty little girl from Greece On a cold dark night on the Spanish stair You can almost swear that you’re seeing double Considering how the evening ended it was more ominous than I could have known. “The streets of Rome are filled with rubble…” were the first words out of Steep Canyon Rangers mouths. LISA SMITH WENGLER CENTER FOR THE ARTS – SMOTHERS THEATRE – FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 2020
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