Graham Sharp has good instincts about a what makes a good song; he also recognizes a difference between a Steep Canyon Rangers song and one suited for a solo project. The standards are high for both. As banjo player, vocalist, and songwriter with the Rangers since its inception in 2000, Sharp has contributed to the band’s catalog of songs. On their last album Morning Shift, he had writing credits on nine of the tracks; on his new album How Did We Do It, released in April, all the songs were written or co-written by Sharp. The result is a collection of songs that easily stand alone but that reward tuning in from beginning to end.
While in recent news several performers have gone out on their own after years with a band, Sharp has no plans to do the same. Michael Ashworth, percussionist for the Steep Canyon Rangers, produced and played on the album.
“I think it’s healthy in the evolution of the band for everybody to branch out and do their thing,” he says. “It’s normal for people to grow beyond the bounds of the band. Obviously, the band has grown in every way imaginable in the last 25 year.” He pointed out, for example, that vocalist Barrett Smith and mandolin player Mike Guggino discovered a shared love for Italian folk music, performing in duo shows and releasing an album together. Guitarist Aaron Burdett had a solo career before joining the band, which he has continued.
“I think for me, as a writer, having a space for all these ‘leftover songs’ is nice,” says Sharp, “because it takes off some of the pressure.” While he says his favorite part of songwriting is getting the first reaction of the band, their “unvarnished first impressions” and putting the song together with the band, he admits that what he likes least about songwriting is plugging his own songs.
“Having another place to record them removes a little of that pressure, though not completely, because I feel strongly about them. And it’s my job to feel strongly. There have been songs that I’ve shoehorned into the Rangers that have turned out to be really good songs for the band, but it felt a little bit like pulling teeth at times.”
In addition to bandmate Ashworth, Sharp recruited a number of first rate musician to play on the project, including Jerry Douglas on dobro and Casey Driessen on fiddle, as well as Ryan Stigmana, Lindsay Prueit, Drew Matiluch, and Tommy Maher.
The new album is also banjo friendly, which is natural. Sharp said that when he put out Truer Picture, his last solo album, he wanted something with its own sound, distinct from the Steep Canyon Rangers, and he was pleased with how it turned out.
When the time came for this new project, he decided to record a bluegrass album, which the Rangers had not done for while—although he says their upcoming album “swings back in that direction. Maybe it’s something in the air.”
Sharp had held onto some of the songs for How Did We Do It for a while. He says, “There were songs that instinctually just didn’t feel like Steep Canyon Rangers songs, so I didn’t even bring some of them to the band. We play lot of the Rangers songs for big crowds, big audiences, and big moments, and it feels like these songs are for smaller.”
He added, “These are all sort of more ‘me songs.’ Obviously, a lot of the songs I’ve written for the Rangers are personal songs and very emotional songs, but these seem to fit more into my daily life. They were smaller songs, simpler songs.”
One should not, however, mistake “smaller” or “simpler” for inconsequential. Much of the beauty of the album is in the personal, the attention to detail. Sharp explains, “All of these tunes are tied to specific moments and places; for me, it almost reads like a photo album through the past decade or so.”
One particular upbeat track “A Good Year” grew out of a trip to New Orleans “while it’s warm enough to bait a hook but it’s still too cold for snakes.” The particulars of the song may have grown out of personal experience, but the lyrics invite listeners along on a riverboat ride with “the Big Dipper for a chandelier.”
I doubt I am the only bluegrass fan who heard the song and assumed Molly Tuttle was the singer tearing off her wig toward the end of a set who inspired a verse of the song. She’s not. But the experience is drawn in such fine lines, it’s easy to put oneself right there at a table by the stage.
As Sharp put the album together, he recognized the easygoing vibe, noting, “there’s not a lot of angst or worry in it. For the most part, it feels good going by. In the end, what I wanted for this project was something happy. A lot of the songs are from where I am in my life. My kids are just about out of high school, and my wife and I are looking toward the next chapter, whatever that is, so a lot of that is looking back.”
The title song “How Did We Do It” epitomizes the feeling of accomplishment when looking back “on the hunger of our younger days. . . how we worked so hard,” realizing that despite the challenges there are reasons for gratitude:
How did we do it?
We just did it.
The only thing that we knew about love
was not to quit it.
“Pretty Green Eyes,” has a waltz-tempo, old time vibe, with soft fiddle and banjo, punctuated by a mandolin break. The song reinforces overarching mood of the album, asking, rhetorically,
How lucky can one person be
to be among those you hold close,
sharing that story, all the work and all the worry,
all the getting and letting it go?
Sharp says that song has his favorite line, imagining a place where “the bears and the bobcats’ll gather, and the frogs and the hogs and the mice.”
Sharp calls himself “a pretty slow writer,” completing these songs over a period of time. He findings himself going back to details in a notebook that didn’t work two or three years ago, realizing, “That’s actually what I need for this song. I can use that here. So I ended up plagiarizing myself a lot in that way,” he says.
The jaunty track “Behind the Scenes” reveals what Sharp’s songwriting style may look like:
Behind the scenes is where the hard work happens.
I’m a dealer of dreams, so don’t wake me if I’m nappin’
The song also gives a glimpse into the songwriter’s attention to evocative sensory detail, “the smell of woodsmoke hanging off of your winter coat.”
Sharp considers himself more of a writer than co-writer, explaining he has to get into the rhythm of writing, more difficult when in the middle of record or releasing music. “I’m so much more likely to write a song in my head as I’m walking around the grocery store, or doing some other task. I feel like if I can just get my brain on that wavelength of noticing, with some ideas bouncing around, that tends to work well for me.”
He acknowledges, however, “That’s not very conducive to co-writing, when I have to create something on the spot. I get self-conscious co-writing because I’m slow.” The one exception on the album, “Steady ‘Round Me.” The song is a slow, almost sultry love song:
My baby moves like water,
her love flows like a river,
runnin’ steady, steady ‘round me.
She smooths all of my edges. . . .
Written with Seth Walker, the song came together fairly quickly, says Sharp. “It’s a simple song; it’s just all about the feel.” After they wrote together, he says, Walker went home, added a few more words, and they finished the lyrics back and forth via text. “That was a nice co-writing moment—and we went bowling afterwards, which was nice,” he added.
Sharp said it took a while as a writer to get past the idea of the tortured artist. He says he was conditioned to art that was full of “angst and depravity,” adding, “That’s what we think of when we think of writers and artists—the struggling artist or the drunken poet.”
Anyone looking for angst should move past How Did We Do It but Sharp has created a jewel box of an album, with a fine balance between the lighthearted lyrics, exemplified by the title song and “Living Like Thieves, and the songs with more serious themes.
Of all the tracks, “Watertown” has the strongest Steep Canyon Rangers vibe, painting a scenario of waiting to play a show, while wishing to be back home in Asheville. The interplay of the banjo, mandolin, and fiddle on the breaks suits perfectly the atmosphere, a sense of foreboding, based on small details—problematic phone calls, a storm rolling in, and out-of-service satellite dish in the single-wide mobile home.
Sharp closes the album with “Angels Don’t Sleep,” a gentle prayer of a song, appealing to his “better angels” to stay on alert. Angels could hardly say no.
Sharp continues to tour with Steep Canyon Rangers, who, he says, are going “as hot and heavy as ever, while putting the wraps on a new record, but has scheduled what he calls a “world tour that spans Asheville, Chapel Hill and Greensboro, North Carolina.” After experiencing How Did We Do It listeners are likely to plead for more.
