It was recently announced that the band who literally could be called the "Godfathers of Americana," the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, are going to kick-off their 50th anniversary celebration this fall with a special show at Nashville’s iconic Ryman Auditorium. The concert on September 14th will be the official start to Americana Music Festival and feature many special guests including instrumentalists Sam Bush on mandolin, Jerry Douglas on resonator guitar, and Byron House on bass. Country Music Hall of Famer Vince Gill will join The Dirt Band, along with John Prine, Rodney Crowell, and “Mr. Bojangles” writer, Jerry Jeff Walker. Two former Nitty Gritty Dirt Band members, Jackson Browne and Jimmy Ibbotson, will also appear. And as always with The Dirt Band, you never really know who will join until the lights go down. Below is a conversation we recently held with one of the band’s founding members, Jeff Hanna. The current members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band include Jimmie Fadden, Bob Carperter, John McEuen and Hanna.
Matt Bjorke for RoughStock: 50 Years. Can you believe the band’s celebrating 50 years?
Jeff Hanna: No. I can’t. It’s crazy. As young kids we thought when we hit 10 years as a band, that would be a great accomplishment. S0 for 50, it was like, "Man, we’re still here." It was three or four years ago that we first thought “Man, we’ might make 50” and now here we are. It’s amazing and we’re very grateful to the fans to still be here after all these years.
Matt: How would you describe the secret to The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s success?
Jeff: A great measure of luck is involved. Hard work and luck all came into play. Somehow we were able to make it when a lot of great bands weren’t as fortunate…
Matt: Yeah, I’m reminded of how your own talented son Jaime Hanna and John McEuen’s son Jonathan McEuen formed the fantastic duo Hanna-McEuen only to fall through the cracks…
Jeff: Yeah, the album they made was quite great and while that didn’t work out because of their label closing and being moved to another label during one of those dreaded mergers, they’ve managed to both remain successful doing different gigs and stuff.
Matt: Yeah, that is unfortunate because the song “Ocean” from that project still is something I love to listen to…
Jeff: Well, thanks man! It’s just one of those things, like we had our own run of moving from label to label because of mergers. But we had the luck of having the audience ride the wave with us too, to bring us around again and be able to play shows [for the fans in their home cities]. We had that luck with recording labels. It's something we had to have a lot of luck for, considering how many of them seemed to open and close, including our label in the late 1990s, Rising Tidewhich also had My wife Maraca Berg…
*Matt: I loved that album (Sunday Morning To Saturday Night) from her…
Jeff: Thanks man… Anyway, the label also had Delbert McClinton, Dolly Parton and some other great talent so it was strange to have it come and go so fast -- us out working on a record and have them go… "Nope, we're closing." We eventually released that album on another label [Ed. note: Bang Bang Bang was issued by Dreamworks Nashville].
Matt: Yeah, I remember Toby Keith remarking on a similar situation with his career navigating label after label, saying, “I’ve been passed around more times than a joint at Dennis Hopper’s house.”
Jeff: I thought you were gonna say Willie’s bus but Dennis Hopper is a cool reference…
Matt: Any thoughts about kicking off the Americana Music Fest 2015 with your band’s concert at the Ryman?
Jeff: Humbled. And to be able to perform with our friends, as an extension of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, that’s going to be a really great time.
Matt: You’re going to have a strong group of guests, including some former band members, talk about how you came to invite the guests to perform with y’all?
Jeff: Jackson Browne-- he is such a great friend. I asked and he said yes. Jimmy Ibbotson, who we call Ibby because there's another Jimmie in the band, we were inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame in early 2015 and that’s where we talked with him for the first time in a long time-- when this show came around later, he was the first person we invited. And to have all of the other guests...
Matt: It’s almost like a mini-Circle event…
Jeff: Yeah, and we’re lucky to be able to get to invite friends out to do things like this with us, both live and on records. It’s really been a fun element to our albums through the years. It also speaks to how we’ve been able to have these friends and those Circle albums and still have our own identity as a band. Jackson's actually going to be in the middle of his tour and Rodney Crowell will be in the middle of his tour with Emmylou Harris, so to have them take the time to be there, that's an amazing thing.
Matt: It also speaks to who they are as people and what the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band means to them...
Jeff: Yes, they're great people and it's great to be able to call them our friends, too.
Matt: On recording the special for PBS from the Ryman Auditorium, how does it feel to know that fans will get a chance to see it on PBS in 2016?
Jeff: That’s going to be great and it’s actually the official kick-off for the 50th year but it takes a while for editing for PBS’s 1 hour special. There’s also going to be a DVD of the event made for their PBS spring pledge drive to go with the programming. The show will be 1 hour on PBS and 90 minutes for the DVD. It’s so great that the fans have a chance to see it and support PBS at the same time.
Matt: In an era when few songs remain in rotation past their initial chart run, your song “Fishin’ In The Dark” remains one of the few iconic songs of the last 30 years to get consistent radio airplay. How would you describe that song’s impact?
Jeff: The song has had a life of it’s own, something we never could’ve ever expected. It’s wild. That song, along with the previous hit “Baby Got A Hold On Me,” brought a younger audience to our shows, an audience that hadn’t been there for the hits that we had earlier in the string of country singles. Ed Bruce had actually cut it and got a mild hit with it before us.
Matt: Yeah, but it probably took what y’all did with the guitars and harmonies to make it into the song it now is known as…
Jeff: Yeah, well, it’s a great song first but the arrangement of a song certainly can impact the way folks react to a song.
Matt: I’m reminded of “Friends In Low Places,” a song which was also recorded by Mark Chestnut on his debut album from 1990 which came out around the time Garth’s did but was likely recorded before Garth had his version out. And Chesnutt’s arrangement was quite different from Garth Brooks’ own arrangement…
Jeff: I didn’t know anyone else had cut that song back then…
Matt: How about the success of “Bless The Broken Road,” a song you wrote with Marcus Hummon and Bobby Boyd that's now an iconic Grammy-winning song?
Jeff: That song was recorded by us, then Marcus, and then Melodie Crittenden recorded it. Melodie was actually having success with it when her label was "Rising Tided” and closed right in the middle of its run up the charts. Then, it was sort of in that Nashville world where it was already done and “used” of sorts, given Melodie's success on the charts with it. Despite that, it was then on hold by a lot of other artists through the years, including Brooks & Dunn and Lee Ann Womack, before Rascal Flatts, to their credit, had the guts to record the song and later release it as a single.
Matt: Yeah, and it’s become their signature song of sorts along the way too….
Jeff: Yeah, it took a decade to become the hit it became but that band, I think they also did something similar with “What Hurts The Most…”
Matt: Exactly. That’s a song originally recorded by Mark Wills, who has had stuff like that happen throughout his career as an artist, including Reba’s hit “Somebody.” I’d say he’d make for a great A&R guy given his ear for hits, even if he didn’t have the hits with ‘em…
Jeff: Yeah, Mark’s a good singer and artist too, man.
Matt: Can fans expect to hear a new NGDB album in the future?
Jeff: Yeah, we’re looking to go into the studio in the Fall. But a lot of things have chanced since our last record came out. While we won’t have A&R help from a label, we will be paying for the record out of our own pockets...
Matt: ...But there’s beauty in that as well given how your fans are so cross-generational and looking for new music to listen to..
Jeff: Yeah, that’s great. Then you also have the aspect that most fans come to our shows to hear the old hits but for us as a band, getting to play new stuff gives us a little energy just as the energy of the fans singing along to the old hits like “Fishin’ In The Dark.”
Matt: What one word that best describes country music to you, Jeff Hanna
Jeff: Storytelling. That’s what it’s always been to me, storytelling.
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