Editor’s Note (October 2024): We love and celebrate our mountain communities; however, following the devastation of Hurricane Helene, many areas remain inaccessible for travel. Please check DriveNC.gov’s travel map for the latest on traveling to these areas.

Well after midnight, the Steep Canyon Rangers’ tour bus drops into a lower gear as it climbs west through the Blue Ridge. I’m tucked away in a sleeping bunk, flopping like a fish as we wind through the mountains toward Nashville, where the Rangers are playing the Grand Ole Opry tomorrow night. As a seasoned author who’s been on countless book tours, I’m used to traveling by plane, train, and automobile, but I’ve never tried to sleep — at least not lying down — on a bus.

I’ve known the Rangers for years, and I’ve seen them play everywhere from the Brevard Music Center to a record shop in Raleigh. But tomorrow’s Opry show will be my first time seeing the band play outside of North Carolina. And tonight’s my first overnight stay on the bus.

The Steep Canyon Rangers — (from left) Mike Guggino, Graham Sharp, Aaron Burdett, Nicky Sanders, Barrett Smith, and Mike Ashworth — draw inspiration from Blue Ridge views. photograph by Alex Boerner

Soon, I give up on sleep, climb out of the bunk, and silently make my way to the front of the bus, where a light’s still burning, signaling that a few of the Rangers might still be awake.

I find banjo player Graham Sharp and bassist and guitarist Barrett Smith hanging out in the galley, sipping beers. Outside, the night whips by, cold and dark. Autumn has not yet passed, and a few leaves still cling to the trees. I take a seat on the sofa beside Sharp, and I rub my tired eyes.

“It usually takes only one night to get your ‘bus legs,’” Sharp says. “You’ll sleep like a baby tomorrow night.”

Kernels from their life on the road help the Rangers’ tour bus feel like home.  photograph by Alex Boerner

Smith passes me a beer, and talk turns to home. I listen as the two bandmates share stories of life in West Asheville, where they’ve lived for more than 20 years. The rest of the band members make their homes in the mountains, too. Mandolin player Mike Guggino and drummer Mike Ashworth live in Brevard. Singer and guitarist Aaron Burdett lives in Saluda. Fiddle player Nicky Sanders lives near Sharp and Smith in West Asheville.

Much of the Rangers’ musical repertoire comes from the old-time bluegrass traditions forged in Appalachia. These mountains have also forged the individual members in ways that remain in their hearts, even when they’re traveling the world. I can relate. I wrote my first novel after years spent living in the North Carolina mountains, and I’ve felt their tug ever since. It’s not something that’s easy to leave behind. A current of Blue Ridge nostalgia courses through much of what I’ve written, and the same can be said of the Rangers’ music.

photograph by Alex Boerner

“It’s the landscape I tend to miss,” Sharp says. “I miss the quiet places where I can catch my breath. I miss the woods. I miss my porch.”

Although we’re sitting side by side on the tour bus as it streaks through the dark, if I were to close my eyes, I could easily conjure the experience of sitting on Sharp’s porch, the rocking of the bus seamlessly replaced by rocking chairs, the scent of woodsmoke and moldering leaves on the wind.

It was under the influence of his little corner of western North Carolina that Sharp wrote “Hominy Valley,” the track that opens 2023’s Morning Shift, the band’s most recent studio album.

The neighborhood fought it when some money from Charlotte
Bought up that river bend
But the church owned the land, and they needed the cash
And their lawyers got an easy win
So look who’s moving in now
Who am I to run my mouth about Hominy Valley?
I think he’s watching me now

The song is about the legend of a Native American tracker who was poisoned by the Union Army for assisting the Confederacy. The story goes that the man was buried beneath an oak tree, the same one that Sharp passes daily in his neighborhood. The old oak and the man rumored to be buried beneath it have watched over the valley as trees have been cut down and homes built in their place, something that Sharp recognizes in his own move to West Asheville, amid a landscape that’s undergoing constant physical and cultural change.

Marking these changes is one of Smith’s favorite things to do when he takes his daily jogs over the solid earth of western North Carolina after days or weeks on the bus. His route down Haywood Road, the main artery that runs through West Asheville, carries him past everything from the public library and local market to dive bars and high-end restaurants.

“Running on Haywood Road through the heart of the community gives me a chance to check in with people who have been there a long time,” Smith says. “It’s also a way to get to know new people. It’s a true West Asheville experience.”

Last year, the Rangers played an intimate set at Sonark Studios in Hillsborough before loading onto their tour bus and heading west to perform at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. photograph by Alex Boerner

By now, the beers in our hands have grown warm, and I’ve grown tired, ready to give the sleeping bunk another try. Sharp looks at me and raises his eyebrows. “So,” he says, “what did you think life on the tour bus would be like?”

I smile and point out the fact that we’re three dads up past our bedtime, drinking beer in our pajamas, talking about how much we miss the mountains. “I don’t want to disappoint y’all,” I say, “but this is exactly what I thought it would be like.”

• • •

Although the Rangers now make their homes in the region that defines them, that’s not where it all started. The legend is well known in North Carolina music circles: In the late ’90s, a trio of undergrads at UNC Chapel Hill got together to play a little bluegrass. Soon, the three friends — Sharp, Woody Platt, and Charles Humphrey III — formed a band called the Steep Canyon Rangers along with Platt’s childhood friend Guggino.

In the early 2000s, the three UNC grads headed west toward Platt and Guggino’s native Brevard and rented a ramshackle cabin south of Asheville in the community of Cedar Mountain. The cabin had shoddy electricity and lacked indoor plumbing. Platt’s father proclaimed, “Y’all can’t live this way!” He had a Port-a-Jon delivered to the property the next day.

Graham Sharp and Mike Guggino photograph by Alex Boerner

The Rangers were already on the rise.

Over the next two decades, the band would release 14 albums, win a Grammy Award for 2012’s Nobody Knows You, and be inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. They would also collaborate with musician and comedian Steve Martin on three full-length albums, and they continue to perform with him alongside his friend, the comedian Martin Short.

As the Rangers’ lives have changed over the years, so has the lineup. Sanders joined the band in 2004, and Ashworth in 2013. Humphrey departed in 2017, and Smith joined soon after. The newest member is Burdett, who came aboard in 2022 when Platt stepped away to spend more time with his family.

Playing in the Steep Canyon Rangers affords Aaron Burdett the opportunity to travel the world with his bandmates. photograph by Alex Boerner

Born and raised in Saluda, where he now lives with his wife and daughters, Burdett was shocked when he was tapped to join the Rangers. He got the call while on a worksite with his construction company. Less than three weeks later, his first show with the band marked the beginning of a three-night stand at the Hollywood Bowl with Martin and Short. He was a long way from Saluda, where he’d spent more time swinging a hammer than he had holding a guitar.

“It used to be 20 percent music, 80 percent construction,” he says. “But now it’s the opposite.”

We’re sitting in the Women of Country room backstage at the Grand Ole Opry. Photos of country and bluegrass legends like Alison Krauss and Patsy Cline line the walls, staring down at visiting bands like distant deities. This is Burdett’s first time playing the Opry, and it’s impossible to escape the gravitas of such holy ground.

The Steep Canyon Rangers spend a lot of time on tour but they always find their way back to their western North Carolina homes, like Burdett’s native Saluda. Photography courtesy of VisitNC.com

“It’s cool to know we can play these iconic venues in these huge metropolitan areas, but then I get to go home to Saluda with its Main Street and a little grill and the post office, everything right there in walking distance.” He laughs and looks up at the portraits on the walls. “It’s kind of like leading a double life.”

Sanders’s life back home, too, is much quieter than life on the road. He spends a lot of time in his West Asheville garden, minding watering schedules and the cycles of seasons while tending to various species of pine, cypress, cedar, and spruce. “Conifers are king,” he says with a smile. “I consider myself a one-man reforestation project.”

Bassist and guitarist Barrett Smith outside near his home in West Asheville.  photograph by Alex Boerner

When the band takes the stage at the Opry, Sanders brings the audience to its feet with his torrential energy, and it’s hard to imagine him holding a garden hose or shovel instead of a fiddle.

To close out the show, the band launches into “Tell the Ones I Love,” a song about leaving town. Ashworth’s drums take on the propulsive drive of a steam engine’s wheels, and Sanders’s fiddle sounds an awful lot like a train whistle blasting out a few last notes of departure.

“Last train before they shut it down,” Sharp and Smith sing. “It’s the last line going that way.”

• • •

Later that night, we’re back on the bus, headed east across Tennessee, toward the Blue Ridge. As band and crew members drift toward their bunks, Ashworth and Guggino listen to a live recording of a show they performed at Wilmington’s Greenfield Lake Amphitheater last fall. Ashworth is the techie of the band, and he often records their shows. This performance was strong, and the Rangers have decided to release it as an album.

Along with Platt, the two Mikes grew up together in Brevard, where they now live with their own families. “Mike and I met on the first day of high school,” Guggino says. “We were wearing the same Pink Floyd T-shirt, so we started talking.”

The two men now have six children between them, and Guggino has another on the way. Their teenage sons are close friends, and the bandmates appreciate the fact that their kids’ childhoods in Brevard are so similar to their own.

The Steep Canyon Rangers make plenty of room in their touring schedule for hometown shows like last summer’s gig at Salvage Station in Asheville. photograph by Alex Boerner

“The boys go downtown and hang out at the soda fountain just like we did,” Ashworth says. “Brevard is a special place because it seems trapped in time.”

“I’ve been to every state and to a lot of countries,” Guggino adds, “and I’ve learned that Brevard is one of the best places in the world to live. Not everyone can look out their window and see beautiful mountains or drive five minutes and be at a waterfall. If you grow up in a small town and you don’t travel a lot, you can take things like that for granted.”

The lights of Nashville are far behind us now. We’ll be home before dawn. I say good night to the two Mikes and settle into my bunk, the swaying of the bus now soothing me as we head into the mountains. Sharp was right: I sleep like a baby.