The first and only time I saw comic Steve Martin in person ...



The first and only time I saw comic Steve Martin in person was also the first time for everyone else in the audience. In was 1971 and I was a college junior and we all gathered at the school’s auditorium to see The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band perform a concert.

The Dirt Band was about the hottest country act around at that time as they had taken Jerry Jeff Walker’s song “Mr. Bojangles” to the top of the Billboard pop charts.

The college crowd was pumped to see and sing along with Jeff Hanna and John McEwen and the band and not at all interested in some lame opening warm-up act, especially from a then 26-year-old guy they’d never heard of.

There were even some scattered boos when the announcer introduced “this fresh young comic you’re sure to enjoy” and Steve Martin walked onto the stage to polite but not unanimous applause. Martin, a high school classmate of McEwen, had a banjo slung over his shoulder and a fake arrow through his head. That alone drew a few ice-breaking laughs; laughs that got somewhat louder when he opened with the line “I’d like to speak seriously with you now.”

So this college audience had known Steve Martin for all of 30 seconds and they were already warming up to him.

Fast forward 20 minutes into his act and let’s just say that Martin had the crowd laughing so hard they were gasping for air. He left the stage, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band came on and put on the great show we’d paid to see but more than once, as we were walking to the parking lot, I heard fellow audience members utter the same theme, something along the lines of “that Martin fella was really funny” or “how about that comedian, he was great.”

I knew then that Martin was no flash in the pan and indeed within three years he landed his first guest appearance on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. In 1976, he hosted Saturday Night Live for the first of a record 15 times and his career has been a non-stop sky-rocket ever since, with more than 50 films on his resume.

Now 40 years after I first saw his uncommon and diverse talent, I’ll get to be among the many who get to see him a week from Tuesday night, again on a college campus, this time at Texas A&M’s Rudder Auditorium as the 39th MSC Opas season kicks off with “Steve Martin performing with the Steep Canyon Rangers – An Evening of Blue Grass and Comedy”.

Through his stand-up career, his movies, his SNL history and three Academy Award hosting gigs, one constant for Martin has been the banjo, which he started playing at age 17 and now it’s obviously his passion as much as ever.

“It was just like love at first site as soon as I heard it,” Martin said in a recent interview. “There was a folk music craze in the 60s’ lead by the Kingston Trio and I can just hear the banjo in the background. And it just attracted me. And then I started hearing people like Pete Segar and Earl Scruggs and I just went crazy for it.”

It’s an ambitious tour that’s in Tucson tonight and will stop at Albuquerque, Tulsa, Dallas, San Antonio, Galveston and Baton Rouge before arriving at Texas A&M for one 7:30 p.m. show.

For Martin, coming to Texas is somewhat of a homecoming. He was born 66 years ago in Waco but his family moved to California when he was five years old.

“I grew up being very proud of being a Texan. And I can remember always looking Texas up in the encyclopedia and reading about it. And being proud that it was always the No. 1 producer of many, many you know things like pecans. And you know everything I looked up, it was the No. 1 producer. And so I was very proud of being a Texan than the lone star state. I thought the flag was very beautiful.”

Once Martin’s TV and film career took off, audiences didn’t see his banjo but he says it hardly went on the shelf.

“You know I always kept up the banjo but there’s no comparison to keeping it up sort of casually and then by keeping it up on stage every night. You just get better and better and better.”

Martin says his path back to public banjo playing got a boost from technology that didn’t exist when he started playing. “The first thing that really got me back into it was when I was able to find the records again. And I started searching the internet to find what’s new in the banjo world. And I could find records on Amazon and Napster.

“And then I identified some players that were new that I’d never heard of. And I actually contacted them just to say I really like your music. And then people started sending me their music. And then I started meeting the people. And then one of the players, Tony Trischka, asked me to play on his record.

Tony was doing what they call a double banjo album which is 2 banjos playing at the same time. And I said ‘well it doesn’t really mean much by just playing old standard, but I have some songs that I’ve written.’ So he came over and I played some tunes for him and he said, ‘that one’. And it was the song ‘The Crow’ and he put it on his record and it became this little bit tiny hit in the blue grass world.

“And then I though well I have some other songs and I’m not getting any younger, maybe I should just record them on a record. And that’s what I did. And it became a No. 1 blue grass record and won a Grammy.”

Ironically that album “The Crow” was produced by old high school chum John McEwen.

“Early on I was doing standup comedy and I don’t think I ever put down the banjo. You can’t do a sad song on the banjo. But I don’t think I ever put it down. And I never put it down today.”

The Steep Canyon Rangers are a band of college buddies who sprouted 10 years ago in Chapel Hiil, N.C. They’ve appeared alone on such stages as Telluride, RockyGrass, and ”A Prairie Home Companion” with Garrison Keillor. The quintet includes Mike Guggino (mandolin/vocals), Charles Humphrey III(bass/vocals), Woody Platt (guitar/lead vocals), Nicky Sanders (fiddle/vocals), and Graham Sharp (banjo/vocals).

The MSC Opas performance on the 30th is a one-night only show and will be Martin’s final show of the current tour that started July 21st. For ticket availability, go to or call the MSC box office at 845-1234.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download