1 upcoming event with the free concerts tag
226 past events with this tagMay 31, 2025
Saturday
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Steep Canyon Rangers at 2025 Muncie Three Trails Music Series
7pm @
Canan Commons
500 South Walnut Street
Grammy-winning bluegrass greats Steep Canyon Rangers will open our 2025 Muncie Three Trails Music Series with our first FREE CONCERT on Saturday, May 31st at Canan Commons in Downtown Muncie! Our first opening act of the 2025 season will be Muncie's Mike Martin & The Beautiful Mess! Lawn chairs, dancing, and all ages are welcome! Come early and come hungry for our local food/drink vendors too! Explore the Trails, Enjoy the Music!
Learn more about the 2025 Series here:
https://www.MuncieThreeTrails.com
RSVP here:
https://www.facebook.com/share/1BnNozA8G1/
Over the band’s esteemed career, Steep Canyon Rangers have released 14 studio albums, three collaborative albums with actor and banjoist Steve Martin, and been inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame! Heralds of the Carolina sound for more than two decades, the GRAMMY-winning Steep Canyon Rangers find themselves in a unique seat at the table for their new release, Morning Shift. On this record, the band tell stories that both honor their roots, and expand upon the living art of bluegrass music. Recorded in Bat Cave, NC, at the Hickory Nut Gap Inn, a historical refuge settled near a long-forgotten crossroads of Southern Appalachia, 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. With a sure hand at the wheel was the distinguished Darrell Scott, whom the Rangers put full faith in to navigate the waters of producing their most important record to date. “It was like going to recording camp,” said Scott, “We ate together, we stayed at the Inn together the whole time, and we recorded. Going about it that way made for a very organic record.” A thoughtful approach to collaboration, ironclad creative trust, and a collective drive towards authentic storytelling, makes for not only a quintessential Rangers record, but a modern North Carolina classic.
Steep Canyon Rangers is made up of Graham Sharp on banjo and vocals, Mike Guggino on mandolin/mandola and vocals, Aaron Burdett on guitar and vocals, Nicky Sanders on fiddle and vocals, Mike Ashworth on drums and vocals, and Barrett Smith on bass, guitar, and vocals. Hailing from both the Appalachian and Piedmont regions of North Carolina, the Rangers have long held traditional bluegrass paramount, while possessing an exceptional ability to bring it down the mountain, and to incorporate accessible influences from all walks of the region. Too, newcomer Burdett brings a soul-stirring element to the Rangers’ mastery of mountain music. Burdett is an award-winning singer-songwriter, and a student of folk tradition. He provides a fresh, emotional context to the songbook, which “can reach out and touch your heart or slap you in the face,” to use the praise of drummer and multi-instrumentalist, Mike Ashworth. “I’ve always loved traditional Old Time and Bluegrass, and the concept of neo- traditional re-visitations and interpretations of those styles.” says Burdett. “Once I started singing with the Rangers, I saw an opportunity to try to write some songs for the band that brought in the traditional sounds and structures that I grew up hearing here in western North Carolina.”
With the band’s last few albums, they have gained recognition well beyond the world of bluegrass, earning a reputation as some of the most influential songwriters in Americana today. Steep Canyon Rangers have appeared on some of music’s biggest stages and in 2013, Nobody Knows You won the GRAMMY Award for Best Bluegrass Album, while 2012’s Rare Bird and 2020’s North Carolina Songbook garnered nominations in the same category!
Learn more about Steep Canyon Rangers here:
You are going to love this FREE show! And we're making sure of it with our great local opening act, long-time patrons of the arts in Muncie, Mike Martin & The Beautiful Mess! Their music has been called everything from folk to bluegrass to punk rock to Celtic to country. The band consists of Mike on guitar, Caryn Egan on viola, Ripley Owermohle on banjo and harmonica, James Reynen on bass, and CJ Barrow on drums (all but CJ also share vocal duties). The last two years the band has won Country Americana Band of the Year in Charleston, SC. Mike, an East Central Indiana native, states, “Muncie had a huge influence on my music and my music business." - come show them your love of Muncie too!
