By Olivia Barker, USA TODAY
More than 30 years ago, Steve Martin immortalized King Tut in song. Now he has paid lyrical homage to another historical figure, Paul Revere. The only difference between the tunes? "One is accurate," Martin, 65, says. (You mean King Tut wasn't born in Arizona before moving to Babylonia?)
By John Dunham, AP
Steve Martin plays with the Steep Canyon Rangers June 23 at the River of Music Party in Owensboro, Ky.
By John Dunham, AP
Steve Martin plays with the Steep Canyon Rangers June 23 at the River of Music Party in Owensboro, Ky.
The actor/comedian/writer/musician will be performing the just-released Me and Paul Revere with bluegrass band the Steep Canyon Rangers on PBS' annual A Capitol Fourth special (Monday, 8 p.m. ET).
Told from the point of view of the patriot's literal sidekick ? his horse, Brown Beauty ? it's the "REAL story of Paul Revere!" as Martin tweeted Wednesday ? vs., say, comments about ringing bells and firing warning shots uttered a few weeks ago by a certain potential presidential contender.
Martin, however, is generous when it comes to parsing Sarah Palin's remarks. "On one hand, it's actually quite accurate," says Martin, who based the facts in his song on Paul Revere's Ride, the 1994 book by Brandeis University historian David Hackett Fischer, which he read several years ago. (Indeed, during the height of the Palin hubbub, Martin tweeted something relatively sympathetic to some of what Palin argued, that the Boston silversmith warned the British: "Paul Revere did not warn that 'the British are coming,' because all the citizens WERE British. There was no America yet.")
Still, he's staying away from any partisan nitpicking. "My song is a historical song, not a political song," he says. That said, if it inspires people to delve deeper into the country's revolutionary past, he's thrilled. The true story is "actually just as interesting as the mythological history of Paul Revere's ride."
Martin is now on tour with the Rangers, promoting his bluegrass album Rare Bird Alert. He wrote the songs, sings on some of them ? as do the Dixie Chicks and Paul McCartney ("an unlikely get, as you can imagine") ? and plays his trademark banjo. The "extremely" well-received Me and Paul Revere closes each show. It's Martin's first tour in a long while.
"I didn't even know if I could play the banjo for two hours," he says. Back in the day, touring was about performing solid comedy for 1� hours. "But now I have sort of comedy leading into a song and it's a really fun form, three minutes of comedy and then a song for three minutes. It breaks things up." And with the Rangers jamming along, he's not alone up there.
Likewise, he has company for his PBS gig, including Jordin Sparks and Glee's Matthew Morrison. Though he's not an avid watcher of Glee?his wife, writer Anne Stringfield, is ? "I'd be on it in two seconds," he says. "I know it's a fabulous show."
Martin is, however, an avid user of that other pop phenomenon: Twitter. Since joining last September, he has amassed 1.3 million followers and thrown out more than 2,300 tweets.
"I'm just doing it free-form and making it up as I go along," Martin says. "It actually is fun for me. It's funny to be walking down the hallway and have a tweet appear in your mind ? and not knowing really where it comes from. That unpredictability to myself might mean it's unpredictable to the audience in the same way."
Source: http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/~r/usatoday-LifeTopStories/~3/x62g5iDfEL4/2011-06-29-steve-martin_n.htm
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