“Three-finger is good for certain songs and clawhammer is good for others. “I love both styles, and I’m so glad I forged ahead and learned both,” he says. Unlike three-finger, clawhammer is played without picks and uses the thumb and back of the fingernail to produce melody, he explains. He says he was compelled to learn frailing the very first time he heard it. Rather than sticking to one style Martin plays both three-finger and clawhammer (frailing) banjo. By the time he’d begun working with them, they had already made a name for themselves, winning the International Bluegrass Music Association’s emerging artist award in 2006. Martin holds his own with this talented group of decades-younger musicians-Woody Platt (guitar and lead singer), Nicky Sanders (fiddle), Charles Humphrey (bass), Mike Guggino (mandolin), and Graham Sharp (five-string banjo). Years earlier he’d met and jammed with the North Carolina band, who are old friends of his wife, Anne. “I went on the road with The Steep Canyon Rangers and really enjoyed it, working very hard on my ‘stage playing’ confidence,” says Martin. It was after his release of his first album, The Crow, which won a 2010 Grammy for best bluegrass album, that music became a priority.
Many of the songs on Martin’s second album, including the title track, “Rare Bird Alert,” were inspired while he was working on the film The Big Year about bird watching. Like many songwriters, once Martin got in the habit of writing music, the tunes seemed to come out of nowhere and from everywhere. It’s an outcome he never could have anticipated. He went from throwing a little bit of banjo music into his comic routine, to presenting two-hour musical performances on stage, with a little bit of comedy thrown in.
#STEVE THE BAGPIPE PLAYER FULL#
So, for Martin, his performance onstage has kind of come full circle. “I had a lot of small venues I was playing as a comedian and I worked up some short songs I could play and incorporated some jokes,” says the comedian who has since “retired” from stand-up, though he does include some comedy as part of his musical shows. He first publicly performed on his banjo as part of his stand-up act. Scruggs and Martin recorded “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and that led to a flurry of creativity for Martin, who had years earlier written five of the songs that made it on the album.Ī real Renaissance man, Martin has for years held simultaneous careers in comedy, film, writing, and music. Martin was inspired to write the songs that went onto his first album, The Crow (2009), after Earl Scruggs asked him to play on his Earl Scruggs and Friends (2001) album. For example, he credits childhood friend McEuen with teaching him “D tuning” at age 19. Martin concedes it took several years before the playing really started to “click.” “I didn’t take consistent lessons, but many people gave me pointers through the years,” he says, recalling some of the players he’s had an opportunity to learn from: “John McEuen in the early days, Pete Seeger’s book, Peter Wernick, Marc Johnson, and even Earl Scruggs, himself.”Įach taught him little bits along the way as he continued to develop his chops.
#STEVE THE BAGPIPE PLAYER WINDOWS#
“I used to practice in the car, late at night, and even then, it would echo down the street, so I closed the windows to the car and that quieted it down a lot.” “The banjo, being very loud, is not welcome in the house when you’re first starting out,” he says. He’d had little musical training and couldn’t even hear the differences between chords when he started. Mind Set on BanjoĪt first, Martin learned by pure perseverance. It affected me like no other instrument,” says Martin who recalls being intrigued by the instrument on recordings from The Kingston Trio, Pete Seeger, and Earl Scruggs. “I always loved the sound of the banjo when I first heard it at age 16. In fact, he claims he’s loved the banjo for his whole life, and played it “seriously” for more than 50 years. Though most of us knew Martin first as a comedian and actor, he began his musical life even earlier. Recorded last fall for PBS Great Performances at Fox Performing Arts Center in Riverside, California, it features songs from Love Has Come for You and Martin’s other music albums: Rare Bird Alert and The Crow: New Songs for the Five-String Banjo. Martin’s latest 2014 release is the joint live concert CD and DVD set: Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers Featuring Edie Brickell Live. His 2013 CD Love Has Come for You, a joint project with Edie Brickell, earned them a Grammy for Best American Roots Song for its title tune. As Steve Martin, 68, racks up Grammys, he has been spreading his wings into new musical territory.
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