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My school did our yearly bluegrass music outreach and my students were head banging to banjo music

Song Review: Steep Canyon Rangers - “Your Lone Journey” (Live, April 28, 2019)

Two acoustic guitars, five voices, one mic and a heavenly performance.

Their rendition of Doc Watson’s “Your Lone Journey” is the latest 2019 MerleFest video the Steep Canyon Rangers released to celebrate North Carolina Songbook’s much-deserved Grammy nomination. On it, the band, sans fiddler Nicky Sanders, sing as one against Woody Platt’s gentle rhythm guitar and Graham Sharp’s languid, fingerpicked leads.

It’s a sad song of a soon-to-be widower saying farewell after a lifetime of love and devotion. This version is all the more wrenching due to the Rangers’ close harmonies:

My darling/my heart breaks as you take your lone journey, they sing.

It’s one of those performances bound to evoke a physical response. If you don’t feel it, you may have already taken a lone journey of your own.

Grade card: Steep Canyon Rangers - “Your Lone Journey” (Live - 4/28/19) - A+

12/28/20

#Youtube #steep canyon rangers #doc watson #merlefest #north carolina songbook #your lone journey #graham sharp #woody platt #nicky sanders #mike guggino #mike ashworth #barrett smith

Remembering John Prine

By Eddie Huffman

One friend had a Spanish teacher in high school who sang and played John Prine songs on her guitar after class. Another learned about Prine as an exchange student in Canada when a guy sang “Hello in There” between slugs from a whiskey bottle. One sang “Paradise” a capella with his buddies as they backpacked across Guatemala. COVID-19 killed John Prine, but his death Tuesday pushed pandemic news – and almost everything else – off my social media feeds. Decades after Prine’s music spread turntable to turntable, guitarist to guitarist, the people who loved him honored him with fond memories and favorite songs. Keenly observed character sketches like “Angel from Montgomery” and “The Oldest Baby in the World.” Raucous novelty tunes like “Dear Abby” and “The Bottomless Lake.” Songs of hard-won romance like “Unlonely” and “Boundless Love.” Meditations on death both somber (“Sam Stone”) and serene (“When I Get to Heaven”). Eight years ago, when I started researching the book that would become John Prine: In Spite of Himself, the protagonist seemed well past his prime. He was a beloved cult figure meandering to the finish line after years of hard living, pushing through divorces and bouts with cancer. He toured regularly, but his years as a vital songwriter seemed far behind him. Or so I thought. Prine got his start at the dawn of the 1970s, when the music business was a star-making colossus overflowing with cash. That business model did little for Prine, though. His songs captured the small-but-telling details of life, from the chain-smoked Camel cigarettes in “Grandpa Was a Carpenter” to the melting snowmen in “All the Best.” Appropriately, his music rippled out into the world via similar moments in the lives of ordinary people, in dorm rooms and coffeehouses, on porches and beaches. So Prine left Atlantic and Asylum behind, started his own little record label, and kept right on doing what he had always done. He had his biggest hit album to date in 1991 at the unlikely age of 45. That was thanks in small part to contributions from friends and admirers like Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty. But the real stars of The Missing Years were the brilliant songs inspired by his second divorce and new romance with Fiona Whelan, the Irishwoman who would become the mother of his sons, his third wife, and his final manager. He ended the millennium with a bang, a delightful album of duets, In Spite of Ourselves, that inspired the title of my book. He went through his first bout with cancer while making that album. After he quit smoking and had part of his neck cut out, he emerged with a clean bill of health and a voice even more ragged than before. Prine released a second album of charming duets in 2016, For Better, or Worse. Otherwise he mostly marked time and toured, delighting audiences with his classic songs and bone-dry sense of humor. His family did the world a huge favor when they ordered him to write material for a new album. He checked into a hotel in downtown Nashville and checked out a week later with the songs that would make up 2018’s The Tree of Forgiveness. Prine hit the studio with a hot modern producer, Dave Cobb, and created a mordant reflection on death and dying that’s great fun to listen to. If the success of The Missing Years when Prine was 45 seemed implausible, the success of The Tree of Forgiveness at 71 seemed inconceivable. But the record put Prine in the Top 10 of the Billboard album chart for the first time in his career, and he began an extended victory lap that included launching his own festival in the Dominican Republic, signing new artists to Oh Boy Records for the first time in years, and winning a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Daffodils and wisteria have exploded across my part of North Carolina recently, pandemic or no pandemic. Since 1988 their colors have signaled the approach of MerleFest. Organizers announced in December that Prine would make his fourth appearance in 2020, joining Willie Nelson, Alison Krauss, Billy Strings, and the usual horde of pickers and fiddlers. But COVID-19 canceled MerleFest and everything else in sight before it started cutting down beloved musicians, from Ellis Marsalis and Manu Dibango to Adam Schlesinger and Joe Diffie. The first red flag for Prine went up three weeks ago when Fiona Whelan Prine announced that she had coronavirus. By March 28 her husband had pneumonia in both lungs and a ventilator to help him breathe. Fiona recovered. John did not. He died at Vanderbilt Medical Center on Tuesday, April 7. He was 73. Nashville will undoubtedly throw a hell of a party in Prine’s honor when the pandemic that took him from us finally subsides. In the meantime, tributes have poured in from people in self-isolation around the world. Like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash before them, a generation of younger artists loves Prine’s music, including Sturgill Simpson, Kacey Musgraves, Jason Isbell, and Brandi Carlile. On Thursday Stephen Colbert posted a video from home where he spoke fondly of Prine before introducing Carlile, who delivered the most gorgeous version of “Hello in There” I’ve ever heard. Last night my partner and research assistant, Gwen Gosney Erickson, said there seemed to be no middle ground with Prine: People had either never heard of him or loved him. She was shocked to find her Facebook feed as flooded as mine with tributes from people she had no idea even knew Prine existed. There are dozens of good reasons for that, songs and performances that boil life down to its essentials. Prine may have used up all nine of his lives, at long last, but his music will live as long as people strum guitars and sing about love, loss, and all the funny little things that make us human.

#John Prine #MerleFest #Bob Dylan #kacey musgraves

Song Review: Steep Canyon Rangers - “Sweet Baby James” (Live)

James Taylor holds the copyright to “Sweet Baby James.”

But the Steep Canyon Rangers owned that sucker when they played it at MerleFest in 2019.

Just released on video and appearing on North Carolina Songbook, the single features bassist Barrett Smith, the newest Ranger, on lead vocals and acoustic guitar; drummer Mike Ashworth on Dobro; banjoist Graham Sharp on harp; and lead singer Woody Platt and mandolinist Mike Guggino on harmonies.

With fiddle from Nicky Sanders, the resulting performance is countrified exquisiteness, bluegrass beautiful and folksy fantastical. Pick a superlative - it won’t be strong enough to adequately describe the Rangers’ work on this beauty.

There was a time when it was impossible to imagine anyone doing more justice to Taylor’s ode to his namesake nephew than Taylor himself.

That time is now gone.

And the Steep Canyon Rangers are the reason.

Grade card: Steep Canyon Rangers - “Sweet Baby James” (Live at MerleFest) - A+

3/31/20

#steep canyon rangers #james taylor #barrett smith #mike ashworth #mike guggino #woody platt #nicky sanders #graham sharp #north carolina songbook #sweet baby james #merlefest

Song Review: Sierra Hull - “Walk on Boy”

Known primarily as a mandolinist, Sierra Hull displays her sharp guitar chops on “Walk on Boy.”

Recording “one of my favorite Doc Watson songs” at home after MerleFest was cancelled, Hull retains the song’s male perspective and lays down a slinky, flat-picked strut to accompany her decidedly feminine, Alison Krauss-esque voice.

If anybody ever asks you, ‘who’s that boy named Brown?/you can tell ’em he’s the boy who left his hammer smokin’ where he beat that steam drill down, Hull sings as she leaves her axe smokin’, too.

Grade card: Sierra Hull - “Walk on Boy” - A

4/28/20

#sierra hull #doc watson #alison krauss #merlefest

MerleFest Announces 2026 Lineup Featuring Old Crow Medicine Show, Alison Krauss, The Infamous Stringdusters & More

https://music.mxdwn.com/2025/12/09/news/merlefest-announces-2026-lineup-featuring-old-crow-medicine-show-alison-krauss-the-infamous-stringdusters-more/

#Merlefest #old crow medicine show #alison krauss #The INfamous Stringdusters

Steep Canyon Rangers Play for “Paste” at MerleFest

- “Come Dance,” “Call the Captain” and “Deep End” feature in set and conversation

Steep Canyon Rangers mixed the old with the new during a three-song set for Paste magazine at MerleFest.

Recorded April 25 in North Carolina and freshly released, the performance and conversation about the band’s history finds the Steeps playing unplugged and soloing into vocal microphones.

Bassist Barrett Smith fronts the band on “Come Dance” and “Call the Captain,” which spotlight the Rangers’ bluegrass side with pure harmonies, supple playing and drummer Mike Ashworth stepping out front on Dobro.

These songs feature Graham Sharp’s banjo, Mike Guggino’s mandolin and Nicky Sanders’ fiddle recalling the Rangers’ roots and adding nuance to Smith’s vocals as he sings about love and coal mines.

Guitarist and newest Ranger Aaron Burdett takes the reins on “Deep End,” a series of clichés - think hit the ground running and bull in a china shop, for example - driven by Ashworth’s percussion and a more rock ‘n’ roll feel. Burdett replaced co-founder Woody Platt and his songs changed the Rangers stylistically and vocally. At this point, it still sounds unnatural, but hope springs eternal where the Steep Canyon Rangers are concerned.

5/24/24