Steve Martin and The Steep Canyon Rangers will be kicking off Friday nights festivities.  Show time is  8pm and will commence at The International Tennis Hall of Fame at the Newport Casino.  It features an open air stadium with both covered and non covered seating. 

Saturday and Sunday’s events will be hosted at the Fort Adams State Park. Gates open at 10am.  Parking lots open at 8am and shuttle service will start at 9am.  Festival attendees also have the option of arriving by water taxi, with the first setting course at 7am.  Food and Crafts are available starting at 10am with music performances spanning three stages awakening at 11:30am.

Other artists joining in on the fun include Andrew Bird, April Smith and the Great Picture Show, Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore, Blitzen Trapper, Levon Helm, Brandi Carlile, Calexico, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, The Swell Season, Richie Havens, Tao Seeger Band, The Avett Brothers, and many more!

And if your not local to the Newport area, you’re in luck!  NPR Music will be steaming live webcasts, chats, artist interviews and photo streams.

Keep checking back for the latest Steve Martin news.

Martin and the Rangers will be making an appearance at this year’s Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.

In a recent interview with Billboard Magazine, Steve reveals that he and the band will be back in the studio in August to start working on a follow up album.  Tentatively the release date is set for early 2011.

“The album will once again be comprised of all original material,” Martin confirms. “There’s no point for me not to do original compositions,” he says. “What do I do — cover somebody else’s song? That’s ridiculous.”

Don’t forget to catch this funny man on the road this summer and keep checking back for more information about Steve Martin tickets and news.

Martin took the award home for “The Crow / New Songs For The Five-String Banjo” at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards last Sunday. This marks Martin’s fourth Grammy win.

His first win came in 1978 for Best Comedy Album for “Let’s Get Small.” He also won in the same category in 1979 for “A Wild and Crazy Guy.” In 2009, he shared the award for Best Country Instrumental Performance with Earl Scruggs et al for his banjo performance of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”

The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, dubbed Jazz Fest, is held April 23-25; April 29-30; and May 1-2. What began at a small square in New Orleans in the 70s has now grown to fill an entire arena.

Though it’s held in New Orleans, it offers more than Cajun music. Performers like Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin, Aaron Neville, the Allman Brothers, Darius Rucker, Better Than Ezra and Average White Band will be performing in 2010 on one of 12 stages.

Jazz Fest food is also a treat for the palate. Sure, it might be a festival, but the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation (who puts together the festival) has a strict ‘No Carnival Food’ rule. With more than 70 food vendor booths, festival-goers can expect to get the very best Cajun food in Lousiana with dishes like crawfish beignets, cochon de lait sandwiches, alligator sausage po’ boy (sandwich), boiled crawfish, softshell crab po’boy and crawfish Monica, according to the festival’s official Web site.

In addition to music and food, there are also several craft vendors that maintain booths in three separate areas of the arena: Contemporary, Congo Square or Folk.