Time to secure your first-class ticket to a bluegrass celebration.
Steep Canyon Rangers have been around a long time and continue to produce fine music, and their live performances are legendary. Next Act is their fifteenth studio album and is a treat for all bluegrass fans. Featuring guest appearances by Eddie Brickell, Celia Woodsmith, and Steve Martin, the album offers fourteen tracks that perfectly highlight the band’s roots and traditions. Recorded by Julian Dreyer at Echo Mountain Recording, Asheville, North Carolina, and produced by band member Mike Ashworth, the record has a live, immediate feel throughout. The mix allows you to be immersed in the whole experience.
Steep Canyon Rangers were formed in the Appalachian Mountains and the Piedmont, and that shines through on the collection. Opening with the fast and furious Rumble Strips, a reference to roadway warning grooves you encounter when slipping out of lane on the highway, guitarist and vocalist Aaron Burdett likened the experience to relationships. A small adjustment may be all that is needed to get things back on track. Burdett also references a near-death experience about jumping a stop sign at a junction and ending up side-swiped by a truck. Clearly, more than a bump in the road, an obvious wake-up call.
The title track is a beautiful ode to an ended relationship and to coming out the other side, vowing to change your fortunes and to take back life. “For my next act / I’m not acting for anyone / Hold to the love that’s held me true / For my next act I’m going to have me a little fun / It’s been too long I’ve played the fool / Those days are done.”
There is some scintillating fiddle work throughout the record, and Graham Sharp’s Circling The Drain is a fine example. Sharp’s banjo keeps pace with Nicky Sanders’ driving fiddle in this celebration of living. The story song Heart’s The Only Compass tells of a meeting between two people on a Greyhound Bus. Steve Martin lends his banjo skills to this one with Sanders’ fiddle again in full flight.
Eddie Brickell adds background vocals to the ballad Halfway To Reno which includes the fabulous line “Two more days and a couple of planes / Till I’ll be home to you“. Barrett Smith takes lead vocal duties on the song Some Days. The banjo and mandolin work is impressive, and although the lyrics are dark, depicting a struggle and the reluctance to ask for help, the music is upbeat and playful. Graham Sharp admits, “We hadn’t produced a record ourselves in a little while, and we had some fun messing with the effects on this one.” It certainly works.
The Graham Sharp song Sugar Lake is a standout moment from the set. Sugar Lake is a flooded quarry in Chatham County, North Carolina, and serves as the focal point of this song about friendship and times gone by. Sharp admits the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Celia Woodsmith from the excellent bluegrass band Della Mae adds beautiful harmony vocals to Hard Times, with Aaron Burdett on lead, in a tale of looking back with affection on days that, at the time, felt so difficult.
The collection ends with the slow, heartfelt ballad “Hard Luck Kid,” written after Sharp met the subject at a Subway shop in Shelby. Nicky Sanders plays it all out with a gorgeous piano. At times, there is so much going on that it is hard to take it all in, but there is enough change of pace throughout to allow you to breathe, and all an excuse to give the collection another spin or more. The writing is sharp and interesting, and picks on subjects we can all relate to, the Steep Canyon Rangers have produced something special.
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