Steep Canyon Rangers

bluegrass

Steep Canyon Rangers is a bluegrass band formed in 2000 by students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and now based in Asheville and Brevard in western North Carolina. The founding lineup paired Woody Platt on guitar, Graham Sharp on banjo, Charles R. Humphrey III on upright bass, Mike Guggino on mandolin and Lizzie Hamilton on fiddle; Sharp and Guggino remain, joined over the years by fiddler Nicky Sanders in 2004, Mike Ashworth on drums, cajon and dobro in 2013, bassist Barrett Smith in 2018 and lead singer and guitarist Aaron Burdett in 2022. The group won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album for Nobody Knows You in 2013. Its long association with Steve Martin, which began in May 2009, produced the Grammy-nominated Rare Bird Alert (2011) and The Long-Awaited Album (2017), along with extensive touring alongside Martin and Edie Brickell and television appearances on Later with Jools Holland and Austin City Limits. Next Act, the band's fifteenth studio album, was released on Yep Roc Records in May 2026; it was recorded by Julian Dreyer at Echo Mountain Recording in Asheville, produced by Ashworth with the band, and features guest turns from Martin, Brickell and Celia Woodsmith of Della Mae. The band frames the record as a return to the bluegrass foundations that first bound it together. Since 2006 the Rangers have also run the Mountain Song Festival, which they founded with promoter John Felty and stage at the Brevard Music Center as an annual benefit for the Cindy Platt Boys and Girls Club of Transylvania County, and they support the CAN'd Aid charitable initiative.

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Upcoming shows in North Carolina

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Upcoming shows in Kentucky

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Upcoming shows in Wisconsin

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Past shows in Maine

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