Steep Canyon Rangers – One Dime At A Time

One Dime At A Time is North Carolina band the Steep Canyon Rangers’ third album. There’s reason to think they’d just as soon forget about the first, but it’s worth recalling simply as an index by which to judge the progress they’ve made since. One listen to this disc, produced by Del McCoury Band bassist Mike Bub, is enough to show that “considerable” greatly understates the case. For a bluegrass group whose members generally skipped the traditional path of apprenticeship with older musicians in favor of a “let’s get together and start a band” approach, the Rangers have done a remarkable job not only of developing their skills in every aspect, but of getting to the heart of the music.

Take, for instance, bassist Charles Humphrey III’s “The Ghost Of Norma Jean”. Its dark story of guilt and death is idiomatic, all right, but what drives it home is the way the song shifts between common-time verses and waltz-time choruses — a device used on rare occasions by the Stanley Brothers and Flatt & Scruggs, but by hardly anyone else in the genre’s 60 years. Other songs, such as banjo man Graham Sharp’s “I’ll Be Long Gone”, with its short refrain, are equally knowing, rendered with wit, conviction, and a fine blend of taste and energy.

On One Dime At A Time, the Steep Canyon Rangers get not only the big things, but the little things right. And that, after all, is what, in a very real sense, bluegrass is all about.