Beginner’s luck? Nah, not for Martin

“I have a lot of beginner’s luck,” Martin said in a recent teleconference to promote his bluegrass tour with the Steep Canyon Rangers. “You know, the first play I wrote was a success and is still ongoing, ‘Picasso at the Lapin Agile,’ and the first screenplay I wrote, ‘The Jerk’ – I mean with two other people, Carl Gottlieb and Michael Elias – was a success. And the first screenplay I wrote alone, ‘Roxanne,’ was a success. And the first music album (‘The Crow’) I did was a success. And then, you know, it’s always necessary to do it again to prove it’s wasn’t beginners’ luck.”

Martin’s track record in acting and writing are well documented, but it has been only in the last couple years that he has been receiving attention for music. Although he played the banjo in the early days of his comedy act in the ’60s and ’70s, most people thought that was just for laughs.

Turns out, Martin is a serious musician. His album “The Crow,” released in 2009, won the Grammy as best bluegrass album. This year he released his second, “Rare Bird Alert,” along with the Steep Canyon Rangers, a quintet of North Carolina bluegrass players who’ve had their own fair share of success.

“Right now, I’m really deeply enjoying going around, playing music and also doing a show,” Martin said. “And talking to the audience and refining it. And working with these guys, the Steep Canyon Rangers, who are fantastic and have really outdone themselves I think on this tour musically and comedically and professionally.”

The Rangers got their start more than a decade ago when three members met in Chapel Hill, N.C. – singer/guitarist Woody Platt, bassist Charles R. Humphrey III and banjo player Graham Sharp. By the time they’d graduated, mandolin player Mike Guggino had come aboard, and fiddler Nicky Sanders completed the band.

“We pretty much started from scratch,” Sharp said in a separate phone interview from Spokane, Wash. “When we started as a band, we were just picking up bluegrass. After a long time we worked our way into the whole bluegrass scene. That’s gone really well, we love playing all that. This opportunity (with Martin) has given us a little wider audience. It’s been a great process.”

Martin’s wife, journalist Anne Stringfield, introduced him to the band. Her family had vacationed in Brevard, N.C., near Asheville, where Platt worked as a fishing guide. They played an informal porch session and clicked from the start.

“She introduced us to Steve right about the time Steve’s first record, ‘The Crow,’ came out,” Sharp said. “It just started off as a little guest appearance with him once or twice here and there. He’d come out and guest with us. Then it turned into a little bit more.”

Martin said once they had played together live, he knew the Rangers were the band for him.

“They were playing in New York City,” he said. “I think it was a one-nighter at Joe’s Pub, which is a kind of moderately famous musical outlet. It only seats 150 people, sort of a showcase-type club. And they said ‘Would you like to come down and play a tune?’ And I said OK. I said, “We’ll play ‘The Crow,’ which is my song. And so I got up in the middle of the show. …

“They just learned it that night. And while I’m playing it on stage, I thought, wow, this song never sounded better. … And that’s why I asked them to do it.”

The result of their collaboration is “Rare Bird Alert,” a terrific collection of Martin’s songs just released on Rounder Records. They range from the traditional (“Yellow-Backed Fly,” a fishing song) to the tender (“The Great Remember,” dedicated to Nancy Short, the late wife of Martin’s close friend Martin Short) to the witty (“Jubilation Day,” a breakup song that now has a clever video,) and “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs,” (an a cappella bit of wordplay that would make Garrison Keillor jealous) to the absurd (Martin’s 1978 novelty hit “King Tut,” rearranged for bluegrass quintet).

Martin seems like a shoo-in to win another Grammy. In the meantime, the Rangers will be recording their own album, which will be their seventh, when the tour takes a break in October.