Nitty Gritty Dirt Band bringing classic sound to The Ark
How many bands, no matter what the genre, are still around, and still making great music, after 44 years?
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band come to The Ark on Monday.
And how many can boast a lineup that includes 3 members who were on board during the band’s 1st year of existence — which, in the case of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, was way back in 1966?
Their many musical accomplishments aside, the fact that the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band has attained such longevity, and such relative stability (a few other members have come and gone since the early days), is an achievement that very few bands can lay claim to.
“We realized, a long time ago, that we really enjoy doing this, and we think we make pretty good music together, so we’ve sucked it up and carried on even when there might have been some disagreements,” says drummer / harmonica player / singer Jimmie Fadden, who helped co-found the band with singer-guitarist Jeff Hanna in May of '66.
The great multi-instrumentalist John McEuen (banjo / fiddle / mandolin / guitar) joined later that year, and although he left the group in 1986, he returned in 2001. And Bob Carpenter (keyboards / accordion / vocals) joined in ’77 and has been on board ever since.
The band comes to The Ark on Monday.
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“Plus, we all do other things outside of the band, which gives us a chance to pursue some of our other interests that might not fit in the framework of the band,” says Fadden during a recent phone interview. “But the band is our main focus, and I think we all realize we’ve created something together that we can’t do separately.”
Which brings us back to their musical status. When the band formed in ‘66, they were more or less a jug band that drew on country, blues, folk and bluegrass influences. But before long, they’d honed their sound into a country-folk-rock hybrid that, along with the ’68-era Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, pioneered the country-rock sound that has influenced at least 3 generations of acts who had a hankering to find the intersection between country and rock — including the dozens and dozens of alt-country / Americana bands who have come along in the last 20 years.
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band is also responsible for organizing some country / bluegrass “summit” albums that may have been even more influential than the discs they did on their own. Those would be the “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” projects — the most famous and influential of which was the 1st volume, in 1972, followed by the second in 1989. They even did a 3rd volume in '02. On those discs, the band invited some of the giants of the bluegrass, mountain music, country and country-rock idioms to sit in, collaborate and swap stories.
The 1st volume was a star-studded affair that showcased the world-beating talents of the generation of country and bluegrass giants that included Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Merle Travis, Roy Acuff and Mother Maybelle Carter, among others.
“That all started when we were doing a show in Nashville, and Earl Scruggs came and brought his son Randy,” recalls Fadden. “We began talking about making a record together, and the project just took off from there, and it happened really fast, with people saying, ‘Hey, why don’t we get so-and-so? We recorded it all on 2-track, and we only did 2 or 3 takes of everything, and the whole thing took maybe a week.
“That was pretty tall cotton for us, to be sure — we were just kids, in our 20s, and here I was, tuning Mother Maybelle’s autoharp, and we’re playing with our heroes.”
The second “Circle” project brought together the next generation of country and roots-rock heroes, including Rosanne Cash, Emmylou Harris, John Hiatt, Randy Scruggs, Ricky Skaggs and Levon Helm, among others.
Last year, the group released “Speed of Life,” which conjures the same wonderfully rustic and melodic country-folk-rock vibe as some of the band’s early records. “We were going for the same kind of feel as ‘Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy,’” says Fadden, referencing their classic 1970 disc (which included their hit recording of Jerry Jeff Walker's "Mr. Bojangles").
Listen to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album “Speed of Life”:
The disc kicks off with the rousing country-rock shuffle of “Tulsa Sounds Like Trouble To Me,” fueled by Fadden’s huffing harmonica. Two of the songs, the wistful “The Resurrection” and “It’s Good To Be Alive” were co-written by Nashville stalwart Matraca Berg, who is Hanna’s wife. “Lost in the Pines” spotlights McEuen’s dazzling banjo chops, and “Tryin’ to Try” is a stellar collaboration between Fadden and Guy Clark.
The group also dusts off a couple of chestnuts from earlier eras and gives them the country-bluegrass treatment — Canned Heat’s Woodstock-era anthem “Goin Up the Country” and Stealers Wheel’s ‘70s-era pop hit “Stuck in the Middle.” Both are smile-inducing, musically satisfying cross-genre work-ups.
On the topic of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band being one of the pioneering and most influential country-rock bands ever, Fadden remarks, “Well, without beating my own drum here, I would say that that’s an accurate assessment. Early on, we took a lot of our influences — Flatt & Scruggs, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, the blues, all the things we liked in country and rock — and combined them.
“But, yeah, when I hear some of the alternative-country artists and bands of the last decade or so, I do hear a lot of what we were doing back in the ‘60s.”
Kevin Ransom is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band performing live in Nashville last fall: