Nitty Gritty Dirt Band is leaving the road, but their legacy remains brighter than ever

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's place at pop culture's pinnacle is unquestionably among the foundational causes for why country music is timelessly cool.

But after almost 60 years on the road and together, 2024 finds the band pulling their touring work to a close.

"This is the final chapter of the barnstorming era of our career," says Jeff Hanna lead singer of the band, whose current lineup includes Jaime Hanna, Jimmie Fadden, Bob Carpenter, Jim Photoglo and Ross Holmes.

"We're still in good shape, but the tires have less tread. We want to end this while we can still go out there feeling good and playing great. Whether it's folk fans or people who love mainstream country, multiple generations of fans have loved the strings of hits we've been fortunate enough to have."

Multiple generations of acclaim

They are one of a literal handful of acts able to be cited as having played with "Mother" Maybelle Carter, having deeply influenced Luke Bryan, plus having words to the song they sang with Mother Maybelle, "Will the Circle be Unbroken," adorn the walls of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum's plaque-filled rotunda.

The band has released over 30 albums (including six top-10s). However, numerous impressive footnotes also highlight their artistry.

Their first 15 years together spotlighted them as Los Angeles country favorites working through the folky edges of the American songbook. The 1972 "Circle" recording with Roy Acuff, Norman Blake, Carter, Vassar Clements, Pete "Oswald" Kirby, Jimmy Martin, Earl Scruggs, Randy Scruggs, Merle Travis, Doc Watson and others followed "Mr. Bojangles" and covers of Hank Williams' "I Saw the Light" and "Jambalaya."

Between 1983 and 1989, they, as a Warner Bros. Records-signed act, offered a rootsy alternative to Alabama's more modern, rock band-inspired work in country's mainstream.

15 consecutive top-10 singles, including 1987's platinum-seller "Fishin' in the Dark," were yielded from this era.

Full circles, unbroken

Hanna's career, alongside his bandmates, is a remarkable realization of full-circle moments with a who's who of generational and hall-of-fame-level guitar pickers, singers and songwriters.

By 1972, he'd played alongside Linda Ronstadt, as well as his childhood guitar heroine Carter and befriended Acuff and Earl Scruggs. Throughout a career spent with tent poles in Austin, Los Angeles and Nashville, the "gracious and kind" communities that have fostered the genre have welcomed Hanna and friends' adoration of its core styles and truths.

Hanna recalls the Dirt Band's roots as a group of mid-1960s-era folk singers playing at "jug band" hootenanny nights at the Paradox club in Orange, California. That was a formidable crew that included a high school-aged Jackson Browne, comedian Steve Martin, and Scruggs, as well as Hoyt Axton, Tim Buckley, Greg Copeland, Tony Duque, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Jimmy Fielder, Steve Gillette, Mary McCaslin, Brownie McGhee, the New Lost City Ramblers, Penny Nichols, Steve Noonan, the Pair Extraordinaire, Kathy Smith, Jimmie Spheeris, Sonny Terry and Jennifer Warnes.

That blended into heading north to Hollywood's Sunset Strip in the 1970s and playing the Troubadour alongside acts that eventually became the Eagles, plus artists such as Crosby, Stills and Nash, Dan Fogelberg, Kris Kristofferson, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, J.D. Souther and James Taylor.

Hanna cites the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's ability to crystallize the vibes of the scenes in those places, as well as times spent touring through Appalachia, Cajun-music-loving sections of the South, mountainous, folk-reviving Western areas and beer-soaked regions of the Mississippi Delta as the "puzzling, but somehow sensible" way their influences were formed.

"Genres are defined by people who are inspired by loving a bunch of different types of music," he adds.

An influential 'lifeline' remains

When asked to surmise why acts like 2010s-beloved superstar Luke Bryan are so fond of 1987's "Fishin' in the Dark," Hanna laughs but then makes many notes about pop-timeless country music.

He believes blending multiple eras of influence with radio-ready production creates a "latitude" for a fanbase's musical interests.

Even deeper, linking back to notions about communities, he recalls the closeness of Los Angeles' "cosmic country," singer-songwriter pop and freewheeling rock scenes all living within a half-hour's drive of each other in the mid-1970s as providing — as much as the songs — the core motivations that fueled two decades of popular culture and music.

Those areas' 500-person capacity bars and nightclubs, attended as much by fans as by peerless creatives, allowed a sound to develop that lucratively spread, in short order, from locally to globally impacting.

However large in revenue these scenes become, the communities of creatives behind them remain tight because of their proximity to the origin of their work.

For Hanna, relocating to Nashville was aided by artists familiar with his 1970s run in Los Angeles, like Emmylou Harris, who were also rediscovering the "vibrancy" of their creative souls in Music City.

Whether it's album cuts or radio hits, that music's energy — an authentic mix of bluegrass, country, folk or rock — is a cornerstone of five decades of American life that, like the circle they sang about with the Carter Family in 1972, remains unbroken.

"As long as creative casts of characters can still pass the guitar around to each other, we have a lifeline to our influences," Hanna says. "There's always something great around the corner."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nitty Gritty Dirt Band stop touring, but legacy remains bright