Steep Canyon Rangers

City Winery NYC Presents Steep Canyon Rangers live in concert on November 19, 2023

Heralds of the Carolina sound for more than two decades, Steep Canyon Rangers find themselves in a unique seat at the table for their new release, Morning Shift, due September 8, 2023. On this penultimate record, the GRAMMY winners tell stories that both honor their roots and expand upon the living art of bluegrass music, all while solidifying their reputation as some of the most influential songwriters in Americana today.

The Steep Canyon Rangers recently recorded their 14th studio album in Bat Cave, NC, at the Hickory Nut Gap Inn, a historical refuge settled near a long-forgotten crossroads of Southern Appalachia. Much like the story of bluegrass music, the conversations surrounding this area are shared, fluid, and greatly affected by a simple matter of perspective. This was the perfect space to feel confident in expanding upon that Carolina sound, the perfect runway to let their well-oiled machine do what it does best- craft stories from the ground up, as a unit.

Graham Sharp writes of similar fluidity on the album’s opening track, “Hominy Valley,” a moving story about the layers of human history in his West Asheville neighborhood.

“It’s not just a shared history, but a living history. Nothing is stamped and finished.” said Sharp, also likening this to the Rangers’ musical journey over the years. “We’re a product of who the band was in the past as well as who we want to be in the present and future. This recording session felt really good, because there was no pressure to be anything but ourselves in that moment. It was important that we came in without any preordained expectations about what kind of record this would be, and Darrell Scott was the perfect producer to provide guidance from an open perspective. ”