Steve Martin — the original wild and crazy guy — is serious. He’s talking banjo.
Not banjokes — like How can you make a million bucks as a banjo player? Start with 2 million — but serious, hammer-on pull-off five-string bluegrass conversation. After a banjo-toting Martin appeared on the “American Idol” finale, everyone knows he plays. The 63-year-old comic/actor/writer has been plucking off since he was a teen, often using the plink, plink, plink tones of the banjo to punctuate his comedy.
Everything changed for Martin when he got the opportunity to record a version of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” with his musical idol Earl Scruggs in 2001. The two were so good together, they snagged a Grammy for their effort.
That spark ignited Martin to not only get back into the instrument he had all but forgotten, but to write and record a string of banjo melodies for an album, “The Crow,” released last week, and that he’ll play live at Chelsea’s Rubin Museum of Art this week.
“This is different from everything else I do,” Martin tells The Post. “Music is nonverbal, and it’s actually strangely physical, and on banjo you’re moving your fingers a lot — I get a sensual pleasure from that.”
He’s humble about his ability, but his Grammy grab with Scruggs belies his modesty. “I’ve been playing banjo for about 45 years and I’m practicing about an hour a day. I’m doing that because you have to, especially with the live shows coming up. I want to be up to speed — literally.”
He adds, “I don’t want to fall back where I was 10 years ago when I was wasn’t playing and was very rusty. There was a good five years when I hardly touched it.”
Ask any banjo player, even a funny one, and they’ll tell you the case is the worst enemy to playing. When the banjo’s in its case, the next stop is the closet and forgotten. Martin owns six banjos — three of them vintage Gibsons from the 1920s — and has solved that problem.
“I bought some banjo stands, and I put a banjo in every room of the house,” he explains. “There’s one in the bedroom, living room, kitchen. I made sure everywhere I went in the house there’s a banjo nearby.”
Well, almost everywhere — “I didn’t put a banjo in the bathroom; that’s a bad image for the banjo.”
All that practice paid off, and Martin was able to attract some high-octane talent in Nashville for this record. Of the many song collaborations on “The Crow” the finest is on Martin’s song “Pretty Flowers” featuring Dolly Parton, Vince Gill and Scruggs.
Remembering the recording session, Martin exhales, “Vince and Dolly — jeez. I was really honored that they agreed to sing it because I don’t think they would have done it if they didn’t like the song.”
Martin understands how expectations form opinion. “Before Dolly and Vince heard the song, they probably had the same reaction to the idea that David Letterman wrote a song.”
Still, he admits he gets cut some slack. “Since I’ve played for years, I get a little break. I think if I were doing rock music, there would be more doubt because there’s such a great tradition of actors doing rock music so badly.” Nevertheless, he says, somewhere in the Smoky Mountains “there’s going to be a bluegrass rebellion because Steve Martin, an outsider, made an album.”
Martin will play three shows at the Rubin Museum of Art, 150 W. 17th St.: tomorrow at 9:30 p.m. and Thursday at 7 and 9:30 p.m. Tickets cost $50.