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Steep Canyon Rangers rely on collaboration to stay strong

The Steep Canyon Rangers have been around since 2000, when the original members were students at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Fourteen albums and three Grammys later, the bluegrass-based Rangers are still going strong, performing on their own and as the house band for Steve Martin and Martin Short.

Their new album, Morning Shift, will be released on September 8, and the band is headlining at the Blue Ridge Music Center this Saturday.

While bassist and vocalist Barrett Smith has known the band members since their Chapel Hill days, he officially joined the group in 2018. WFDD's Neal Charnoff spoke with Smith about how the band is faring more than two decades since its formation. 

Interview Highlights

On collaboration: 

"The band's been together there for 20-something years, you know, so it's quite an organism when it comes to making art and processing information. We have writers, you know, primary writers who bring songs either in a complete form or not at all complete. And so the process of refining that completed thing or building a song almost from scratch is something we've been doing for a long, long time."

On performing at the Blue Ridge Music Center:

"I think it's a beautiful, beautiful spot. Now, that's all independent of us, you can go there anytime and enjoy it. But when we're there, this is one of the very few places in the country that we've taken on as like, 'This is a home.' This is a homecoming for us, we do it every year — and it's special. 

On his advice for the newest Ranger, Aaron Burdett:

"The advice for Aaron ends up being, evidently, just be yourself. Because it works. And the band's as good as it's ever been right now. I mean, that's another reason for people to come out to the Blue Ridge Music Center. Just to see this band is always changing. You know, it's been lots of different things, and some people still think of Steep Canyon Rangers as being like a traditional bluegrass band that crowds around a microphone, a bunch of young guys. And it's not exactly that. We're not exactly young, for one thing!"

Neal Charnoff joined 88.5 WFDD as Morning Edition host in 2014. Raised in the Catskill region of upstate New York, he graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1983. Armed with a liberal arts degree, Neal was fully equipped to be a waiter. So he prolonged his arrested development bouncing around New York and L.A. until discovering that people enjoyed listening to his voice on the radio. After a few years doing overnight shifts at a local rock station, Neal spent most of his career at Vermont Public Radio. He began as host of a nightly jazz program, where he was proud to interview many of his idols, including Dave Brubeck and Sonny Rollins. Neal graduated to the news department, where he was the local host for NPR's All Things Considered for 14 years. In addition to news interviews and features, he originated and produced the Weekly Conversation On The Arts, as well as VPR Backstage, which profiled theater productions around the state. He contributed several stories to NPR, including coverage of a devastating ice storm. Neal now sees the value of that liberal arts degree, and approaches life with the knowledge that all subjects and all art forms are connected to each other. Neal and his wife Judy are enjoying exploring North Carolina and points south. They would both be happy to never experience a Vermont winter again.

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