Shows will be held in Nashville
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its seminal album, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, will two shows at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. The shows will be December 2nd and 3rd at the CMA Theater.
Founding members Jeff Hanna and Jimmie Fadden, along with Bob Carpenter, will be reuniting with long-time former Nitty Gritty Dirt Band member John McEuen and former founding member Les Thompson for this momentous occasion, and just like on the original record they will be bringing along some of the finest players in Nashville such as Jerry Douglas, Carlene Carter, Shawn Camp, Charlie Cushman, Stuart Duncan, Trey Hensley, Dirt Band members Jaime Hanna and Ross Holmes, and many more surprise guests.
Tickets go on sale on Friday, October 28th at 10 am CT via the organization’s website.
Originally released in the fall of 1972 and recorded at Woodland Studios in East Nashville in six days, the 38-track set featured Earl Scruggs, Roy Acuff, Doc Watson, Mother Maybelle Carter, Jimmy Martin, and many others. The project bridged the west coast sound and fans of the Dirt Band with luminaries in the alt-country, folk, bluegrass, and what we now call Americana, worlds.
Fans wanting to dig deeper into the 50th anniversary of Circle ahead of these shows can consider reading Will the Circle Be Unbroken: The Making of a Landmark Album, 50th Anniversary, a beautifully illustrated book by John McEuen. This book gives an inside look at the making of a landmark album, covering each of its 38 songs and sharing previously unseen photographs taken by the author and his brother Bill McEuen, who produced the recording. Essays by Dirt Band members Jeff Hanna, Jimmy Ibbotson, Jimmie Fadden, and Les Thompson with a foreword by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan.
This year has been a big year for the group. In March, they released Dirt Does Dylan, a guest-laden take on Bob Dylan’s deep catalog of songs. The band also capped AmericanaFest ‘22 with a sold out Ryman release show for Dirt Does Dylan, taped for PBS to be broadcast at a later date.
The group is also featured in the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Western Edge: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock, presented by City National Bank, exhibition that opened on September 30th and runs nearly three-years. The exhibit surveys the rise of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Eagles, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and others who found commercial success with a hybrid of rock sensibilities and country instrumentation and harmonies. These trailblazers’ musical contributions were expanded upon by the next generation of L.A. roots music performers — the Blasters, Los Lobos, Lone Justice, Dwight Yoakam and more — who once again looked to traditional American music for inspiration, blending hard-edged honky-tonk, Mexican folk music, rockabilly and punk rock. These artists — along with their country-rock predecessors — provided inspiration to future generations of country and Americana artists.
