Serious fun for Steve Martin: A crisp but kooky new bluegrass album comes amid a broad burst of creativity
During more than a half-century as an artist and entertainer, Steve Martin has consistently pushed and prodded at the boundaries of many an art form. And he's doing it again with "The Long-Awaited Album," his fifth collection of original music in the last eight years.
Take the new album's lilting country waltz "Nights in the Lab," an ode to the love that blooms between "two biologists ... who process biogenesis and stare into a petri dish." Or "Caroline," a comic yarn about a guy abandoned in a parking structure set to a melody that has little regard for traditional rhythm or meter.
"That's the aspect that gets overlooked or underrated," said multiple Grammy-winning producer Peter Asher, who produced "The Long-Awaited Album."
"When you look at this album and see how good the songs are - he wrote every song," Asher said. "He comes up with these brilliant little melodies and instrumentals written on
