Though the East End of Long Island is certainly not known as a hotbed of bluegrass music, for the past several years, the Shelter Island Recreation Department has created something of a grassroots bluegrass scene by sponsoring an annual concert in January featuring some of the hottest folk music bands in the business today.
This year is no exception.
On Saturday, January 16, the Steep Canyon Rangers, a five piece band out of Asheville, North Carolina take the stage at Shelter Island School for a 7:30 p.m. concert. This is the first time the Steep Canyon Rangers, or simply the Rangers as they are known, have played the East End. Despite national acclaim, several original albums (the latest, “Deep In The Shade” came out in October) and a hectic touring schedule, this is a band that was born 10 years ago not through music, but rather friendship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“Three of us were students — the bass player Charlie [Humphrey III], the banjo player Graham [Sharp], and myself,” explains Woody Platt, guitarist and lead vocalist for the Rangers. “We met as freshmen and developed a friendship before we were into music.”
While Platt played casually as a college student, he was no where near the point that he might have considered a career as a musician.
“I had always liked to play a few chords on guitar and sing songs,” says Platt. “Our banjo player was a sax player who got interested in banjo in college and the bass player played a bit in high school. They both got me into it. The whole band thing didn’t happen until our senior year. We went to bars to play. We weren’t that good, but had lots of friends.”
“The music came out of the friendship,” adds Platt. “None of us were music majors, it was just a hobby. We graduated, not with music degrees, but in history, international studies and I was interdisciplinary studies. We were having so much fun.”
Though they stuck it out and got those college degrees, the founding members of Steep Canyon Rangers have been so successful with their music they haven’t had to put them to much use in the years since graduation — unless you consider international studies handy for a bluegrass group on tour, say, in Germany with comedian Steve Martin. And that’s exactly what happened last summer when the Rangers spent seven weeks on tour in Europe with Martin, who is, himself, a banjo aficionado and talented player. They also performed with him at Carnegie Hall and on the David Letterman Show. Platt recalls how casually the initial hook-up with Martin came about.
“That was cool, and a random thing,” explains Platt, whose brother happens to be friends with Martin’s wife. “They came to the North Carolina mountains for vacation and they invited me and a couple guys over just to play. We had a great little informal jam and dinner. Then we hosted a bluegrass festival in Brevard and invited Steve Martin to be a surprise guest and it grew from there. We played Joe’s Pub in New York and Martin joined us there and when he went on tour, he invited us along.”
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