Steve Martin picking his way to MerleFest

Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers bluegrass band begin a second nationwide tour Monday with performances planned at MerleFest in Wilkesboro near the end of the month. Martin, in fact, told the crowd at a recent performance at the 250-seat Largo theater in Los Angeles that he met the band at a party in North Carolina, but joked, "when we're in California, I tell people we met in rehab."

Yet when it comes to the music from his Grammy-winning bluegrass album, "The Crow: New Songs for the Five-String Banjo," Martin is all serious.

A banjo player for 45 years, Martin says he wrote all 15 tracks on his album, which spent a year atop Billboard's bluegrass charts. The previous tour included stops in Charlotte, but the band's Web site listed none so far this time around.

Other Carolinas dates are planned for this tour, including MerleFest, the annual tribute to the music of North Carolina's own Doc and Merle Watson. The band plays solo performances there on April 30 and May 1 and with Martin on May 1.

The 64-year-old actor-writer-musician says he fell in love with the banjo the first time he heard it during the 1960s folk-music craze.

"It was just the sound of it," Martin said in an interview before the Largo performance. "It was like my ears were trying to part away the other instruments and focus on what is that instrument, and I've always loved it."

This story was originally published April 14, 2010 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Steve Martin picking his way to MerleFest."