Best known for their tours backing Steve Martin, this Grammy Award-winning, North Carolina-based sextet is striking out on their own. The band has spent nearly two decades bending and shaping the bluegrass aesthetic, wedding it to elements of pop, country, folk rock, and more to create something original and all their own. Their new album, Out in the Open, is perhaps Steep Canyon Rangers’ bravest excursion thus far, transcending bluegrass while in many ways getting closest to the genre’s true form thanks to producer Joe Henry’s very traditional approach toward recording.
Steep Canyon Rangers have been expanding the parameters of bluegrass since coming together in 2000. Since then, the band has developed a remarkable catalogue of original music that links them to the past while at the same time, demonstrates their ambitious intent to bring string-based music into contemporary relevance.