Grammy award-winning bluegrass artists Steep Canyon Rangers and Peter Rowan play in Beaver Creek Saturday

Steep Canyon Rangers play one of only four shows on its tour with Peter Rowan at the Vilar Performing Arts Center Saturday. The Grammy award-winning band pairs up with Rowan, another Grammy winner and legend in progressive bluegrass. Songs span the origins of bluegrass and Rowan’s years with Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys to recent original material by Steep Canyon Rangers.

During their first decade together, they focused more on traditional bluegrass and then expanded from there. “This is just the next evolution in that,” said guitarist and vocalist Aaron Burdett, who joined the band in 2022, after founding member and front man Woody Platt left to spend more time with family.

“Woody was the driving force in the band personality-wise and stage presence-wise. He’s a larger-than-life personality, and he was very much the management of the band and the business guy. He was a real central force in the band’s history, so when he left, all those roles ended up getting filled. What’s really cool is that all the members have stepped in and not only taking up that, but actually created a new sort of energy and environment that has been working really well for us,” he said, explaining how the members share more of the creative spotlight. “That’s one of the great things about our shows. You never really know who’s going to be the focal point for the next song.”

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He said it’s “still a bluegrass band at heart, but what we play on stage is not that at all. You can tell all these players have done that in the past. I am probably the least-steeped in bluegrass in the band, although I grew up here (in North Carolina), so you can’t swing a dad cat, as they say, without hitting a banjo. It’s just my take on it.”

The band released “Morning Shift” in September 2023. Recorded in Bat Cave, North Carolina in a historical inn, it features well-crafted stories, which honor the members’ roots and expand upon the bluegrass genre.

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“We’re a product of who the band was in the past, as well as who we want to be in the present and future,” said vocalist and banjo player Graham Sharp. “This recording session felt really good, because there was no pressure to be anything but ourselves in that moment. It was important that we came in without any preordained expectations about what kind of record this would be.”

Producer Darrell Scott brought a cohesive sound to the band during what Burdett refers to as an uncertain time, as the band was in flux.

“He did a really good job of — I’m using his words, ‘pulling together the best album this group of six people can do,'” Burdett said.

They followed up that record with “Live at Greenfield Lake,” released Aug. 30, 2024. It featured many of the same songs on “Morning Shift,” as well as some new ones, to showcase where the band is these days.

“It’s a different band now, and we have a little different thing going, and we’re real proud of it,” he said. “It’s all the things you love from before plus a bunch of new things that I know you’re gonna like.”

Burdett especially appreciates being a part of the band simply because of the members themselves.

“They’re just quality humans to be around — that’s the truth of it. I mean, they’re just nice, thoughtful and generous people,” he said. “It’s a mature group is one way to put it, and I don’t mean just in age. They’ve got it worked out, and they know what’s important and what’s not. The other thing that speaks to me is they work hard all the time — and not in an arduous way, just in a steady way. We just always want to improve and have never stopped trying to get better and better the show. So it’s just a really good artistic environment to be included in.”