Nitty Gritty Dirt Band will play Chesterfield as it bids farewell to the road

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band originated as a group of Southern California teenagers hanging around a guitar shop in the mid-1960s, trying to impress each other with their ability to play obscure American folk songs.

The Dirt Band expanded its sound to fit the mildly psychedelic country rock popular at the time, scored a hit with a song about a tap dancer and later called in many greats of traditional country and bluegrass for a series of back-to-the-roots records.

The group became a country-music juggernaut, sending 17 consecutive singles to the Top 10 of the country charts and occasionally landing near the top of the pop charts as well. In recent decades, the group took another turn toward American roots music.

Now the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band is on a farewell-to-the-road tour that stops at Chesterfield Amphitheate on Thursday.

Founding members Jeff Hanna (guitar, vocals) and Jimmie Fadden (harmonica, drums) remain the core of the group, along with keyboardist/accordionist Bob Carpenter, who joined the Dirt Band in 1980.

St. Louis Public Radio’s Jeremy D. Goodwin spoke with Fadden about his group’s musical evolution and its plans for a future off the road.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Jeremy D. Goodwin: You’re calling this a farewell tour. Does that mean the Dirt Band is going away?

Jimmie Fadden: Next year, it will have been 60 years of getting out there and getting in the bus every year and touring and taking it to the street. We endeavor to get to our audience, it's just that it's physically difficult. We're not kids anymore. I think we earned a little extra time in the pasture. I think you may see us playing occasionally, some concert or event here or there.

I have friends here in Florida that I pick with. All I have to do is throw my stuff in the car and go downtown and let it wail. There's no airports, there's no buses.

Goodwin: Is recording still on the table?

Fadden: We've actually spent little time in the studio lately, and I think we'll have something. I think that we will continue to do that.

Goodwin: Your late-'60s recordings sounded very much of the time. What did it mean for the band’s development a few years later when you were able to call up legends like Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson for the first “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” album?

Fadden: There was a wide variety of expression here, from different people, from different parts of the country. It was very much about American music. It was the experience of getting to hang out with those musicians that we had idolized and learned from and saw as the roots of the folk music era. It’s a pretty heady thing to be reading about Earl Scruggs in “Sing Out!” magazine and then meet him in a Nashville studio.

Country music already had developed its audience and had its stars, and kids growing up in California really never knew anything about that. It was so interesting to land in the heart of the people who created a lot of this. The folk music scene tended to be a little more college-educated.

The music of the “Circle” album was the sound of rural America. The folk music scene was music of rural America idealized and more politically directed. The country music scene was more emotionally directed, and I think the audience was not necessarily aware of what younger people were doing politically.

Goodwin: By the late '70s and early '80s, you were having hits with songs that use the instrumentation of country music but were right at home on pop radio. I guess you were just changing with the times?

Fadden: I don't know that we were focusing on an outcome there. There weren't expectations here in this creative process. The only thing was we hoped that people that had been listening to us would continue to listen to us and find that what we were doing enjoyable.

Goodwin: By the time you got to the mid-'90s, you were doing more stuff in a stripped-down format, and then in this century your records have really gone back to the roots again. What’s behind that evolution?

Fadden: One of the things that might be a part of that is that Jeff and I both lived in Nashville for a long period of time. I have since moved away, but we have a lot of friends in that city. We see Jerry Douglas a lot. We see Allison Brown. Our circle of friends has become a little more acoustic-centric, maybe.

When you look at the CMA Awards and things like Americanafest, I think there’s just a bigger community now around [alt-country] and bluegrass. The family has gotten bigger, and we spend more time with one another.

Goodwin: Nashville is also the center of the commercial part of the industry, but you’re brushing elbows with people who play in a more traditional style. That’s a choice.

Fadden: I think we've always believed in American music history and its legacy. And I think we've always been a part of that. The middle of America has really been our stock in trade. If you're living in California, you're not talking about Missouri. You're not talking about Kansas or Iowa. But we would go out on tour, even when we were living on the West Coast, and play these places. And we’d go back to California and think: “I don't think you people get it. You're missing the idea that there's a lot going on out there between the coasts.” It’s like a third coast. Surf’s up in Iowa!